White Noise
by Shamera
Summary: 500 years is a long time. Just what happened with Hope and Noel? (Just a series of oneshots and snippets covering their lives after the finale of XIII-2.)
1. forty years

**White Noise**

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People weren't made to live forever.

Perhaps that was why Caius went insane. It couldn't just be because he had to watch Yuel die over and over… it was continually waiting and then finding her and losing her, and that _wait_ being longer and worse than the short time he had with her.

But he was excusing the actions of a man whose actions couldn't be excused, wasn't he?

Hope frowned at his calculations, tapping a stylus against the hologram he had pulled up, unable to make sense of the usually neat numbers. There was something wrong with the coding of this program, and he just— he didn't know _what_ it was. One simple sequence of numbers done in the wrong order had reduced a complicated analysis program into… white noise. Nothing.

Years ago, he would have been able to solve it within seconds. Now…

His mind was blank.

Then again, there was no such thing as 'years' any more, was there? It was debatable at the very best. Time was an abstract construct, to be measured in increments thanks to the human mind needing a way to keep track of things. It was intangible, immutable, but amaranthine. The term was a concept invented by humanity, and yet it's effects were undeniable.

Time washes everything away, seen even by human eyes.

The cessation of time… how was that to be measured? Clocks would still tick. Calendars would still be made. To say that 'time stopped' when chaos was unleashed wouldn't be entirely correct. It was easier to say that the cells had stopped decaying, that more than humanity— even plants and wild creatures were affected. Death existed only as a ending for those who were murdered… or had taken their own lives because they could not stand the unchanging world.

Couldn't stand the fact that with the lack of age came also the lack of new life.

But decay couldn't be _stopped_. Cells may be everlasting, but the human soul…

He dropped the stylus. The _soul_? Really? As a scientist, he wouldn't be able to prove…

And yet.

He had pondered this for a long time. The religions of Gran Pulse had said that the human soul was immortal in the way that the body, and even the world around them, was not. Those who worshipped Etro claimed that she imbued their souls with Chaos, and that Chaos would return to Valhalla upon the death of a person. If Chaos had indeed been released to the world… was that where the immortality came from? Because they were surrounded by the very same thing that kept the soul immortal?

The balance was in having both an immortal soul and a mortal body. The human mind was part of the body and thus just as mortal as the world around it.

Hope couldn't concentrate on the coding.

"What's taking so long?"

"It's not working." Hope responded calmly, refusing to be startled by Noel's sudden voice behind him. The younger man had always been too quiet in his movements, but Hope had gotten used to that through the years. Enough to cover his jumpiness whenever Noel tried to catch him by surprise. "I'm fixing it."

In the corner of his eye, he could see Noel pull up a stool, sitting down heavily to watch Hope's actions. It made the silver-haired man cringe just slightly to be put under scrutiny. "You don't usually take so long."

"Unless you want to do this…"

"Too many numbers." Noel excused himself. "But I mean you don't usually take so long to fix things. It's been, what, twenty minutes since you just sat here to find what's wrong with it?"

Hope moved to pick up the stylus again. "It's a complicated problem."

"It's the same thing that happened last week, right? You took, what? Two minutes with that?"

It wasn't the same as last week, was it? Last week it had—

White noise.

Hope's frown grew and he tapped his stylus to where he had corrected the coding last week. Sure enough, the same red flags signalled in his head when he saw the numbers there. How had things become skewed there?

True to form, it took mere seconds for him to correct the equation.

He turned to the hunter afterward, trying to clear his frown with little success. "I didn't know you were paying attention to how long it took me to correct these problems."

"I pay attention to a lot of things."

Hope turned back to the screen, not sure what to make of those words, or the curious stare that had accompanied it. Of course Noel would pay attention. Hope had set up problem after program running to try and discover as much as he could about the chaos that currently consumed this world, and about just would happen later on.

It wasn't an ability to see the future, but it was a program that would decipher the most probable of outcomes based on current events and the actions of people. While it wasn't as accurate as the Seeress's abilities, it was nearly 92.86% accurate, taking into account every person still alive in the world to predict the violent crimes that had been on the rise once people grew tired of living the same day over and over.

It was a program he had developed after the dissolution of the Academy, taking him nearly thirty years of schematics and testing before getting it to where it was now. During that time, it had been Noel who had gone to look for the parts he needed, and Noel who not only made sure they wouldn't be found by vengeful people but also encouraged him to continue on a nearly impossible endeavour.

Ten years after the first prototype was created, and Hope was trying to push the machine beyond the bounds of what it had been created for. To see not hours and days into the future, but months. Years. Decades. _Centuries._

He wanted to know, had to know: would things ever change from what they were like now?

Staying twenty-seven for eternity had been a novel thought that tickled at the back of his head in the dark moments of morbid humour late at night, but forty years of it… It was burdensome. He felt old. Tired. He couldn't imagine how it must have been like for Noel, to have stayed eighteen for so long. Or for the children who had stayed that young, stayed small and knowing that they would never be able to grow up. The two of them had it easy in comparison. They were neither young nor old, at the perfect age for chaos to have come for them.

Technically, he was already over five hundred years old. The first time he had travelled to the future, he had felt it. The weight of time pressing down on him in a way he had never expected. He had hardly been able to sleep then, unable to close his eyes for too long for year that his corneas would rot and fall to ashes right inside his head. It was a needless fear; a stupid one. But it had been a lingering nagging in his mind, eating at his thoughts in the quietest hours of the night. Enough for him to abandon his sleep and overdose on caffeine, excusing all concerns as restlessness and a need to complete his work.

He hadn't needed anyone intruding into his thoughts and fears then, and he didn't need that now. Not even from Noel, whom he called as a friend… perhaps the only real friend he had left. All his other colleagues… while they would do so much for him, he couldn't ask it of them. They had their own lives to attend to now in the twisted society erected after the suspension of time.

Things were _different_ now.

"Did you manage to pay enough attention to fix it next time?"

At that, Hope heard a snort at his side before Noel's face came into view again, the man leaning against the desk.

"That's what you're here for, right? To fix things up? I'm more of a, uh… physical fixer-upper. New parts, fights to put down… hey. If that thing manages to find a way to fix things…" Hope didn't dare to look in Noel's direction. The sheer faith in his tone was bad enough. "Then we could put everything to rights again. Continue on."

Forty years, and Noel hadn't lost that faith. Had believed completely in Hope in a way he couldn't believe himself. But then, Hope had set himself up for this. It was something someone had to do; reassure Noel in those moments when the other didn't think there was a future left.

"We'll manage it. It's not impossible."

It didn't matter if Hope believed in that or not. What he had learned was that the first step was insisting, even to himself, that things were possible. And luckily enough, in the process of convincing himself, he managed to convince everyone else around him.

But he could feel the weight of all those years. _Pushing_.

He turned to face the younger man with a slight smile. "I think you'd have a knack for it. Fixing this. If you don't mind listening to me talk, I can tell you how to do it."

"What, _this_ thing?" Noel pointed a finger at the computer terminal. He shook his head incredulously. "Hope, I don't think anyone in the _world_ other than you can operate this thing. It'll take you years just to teach one of your Academy workers how to fix this thing up. Me, I don't know the beginning of what any of this is."

Not entire true, since Hope knew that the hunter had been picking up lessons the past few decades. Noel had watched quietly while Hope worked, usually there asking him what he needed. Forty years together and the two of them had formed an almost… silent repertoire, a method of communications that meant Noel usually knew what Hope needed before Hope himself knew.

Or, as was just proved, Noel would know what was wrong with the machine before Hope did. If nothing else, he already had years above everyone else just because of that. The hunter probably knew much more than he thought he did.

For right now, the machine could only predict what would happen in a few days, but the future from what Hope could see remained pretty much the same. Everything stayed the same except for the length of time it took for his mind to focus.

He smiled and pushed his chair over a few inches to give Noel space in front of the holographic terminal.

"We have time."

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**A/N:** Personally, I want to know what happened in those 500 years between games. So, uh... throw prompts at me? Is there anything anyone would like to see? I figured a series of flash fiction might work, since I've spent the last few days staring intensely at _Kinematics_ and having absolutely nothing come to me.


	2. seven months

**Forgotten by Time**

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The place they found was run down.

That was putting it... politely.

Hope hadn't been able to stop the grimace when he entered the room, bringing a gloved hand to his face as he took in the peeling paint and the moldy floorboards, hearing the crunch of glass underneath his boots and seeing the thin roots that had begun to sneak through cracks in the walls. He had barely been able to see that the place used to be a house from the outside, but once the door had been opened...

The light was dim, peeking through cracks in broken windows and only illuminating the front room. Everything else was encased in shadow, the furniture lying around covered in threadbare and dirty white sheets.

"So? What do you think?"

He turned his head and offered up a thin smile to the younger man waiting anxiously for his answer just behind him, looking quite pleased with himself for the find. Noel looked almost _cheerful_ and proud, and Hope couldn't bring himself to step on that, no matter how many reservations he might have about this place just upon first glance.

"It's — hidden." Hope conceded, because he _had_ asked for a place that people wouldn't wander into by accident. Valhalla's consumption of the world meant that the terrain was strange and unfamiliar, old streets and winding paths replacing what was once bright and known to everyone. The past several months had been rough on everyone outside of the select few who delighted in the idea of never ageing and dying. At first there had been celebrations in the streets once people realized that the unleashing of chaos didn't mean the end and everyone was going to die, but just the opposite.

There had been relief, and then joy the the point of chaos in the streets. Then days had gone on and women who were supposed to give birth... didn't. Weeks, and they still didn't. Months, and the realization that no new life would be brought into the world became glaringly obvious.

That's when things began to fall apart, despite the Academy already trying to inform people what had happened. Seven months in and Hope had decided that the best course of action would be to let people burn out the rage first before dealing with them. This wasn't the first time he had been subject to hatred and blame, after all. Sadly, this time it was easier to bear since it couldn't be pinned directly on him. It couldn't be pinned directly on _anyone_, since Hope made sure there would be no information released on how Noel's battle with Caius had gone.

The Academy had worked hard to prevent this from happening, after all, and people would remember that in time. What they had to do was stay in the background for a little while before quietly coming back to help again.

For right now, though, Hope had suggested to the scientists that they go home and spend time with their families. Rebuild. Collect their wits about them and adjust to the situation. Let the general populace have a target to paint and just weather the storm until it passed.

As for him... Hope had requested for Noel to find somewhere away from people. He wasn't going to stop his work, but there was little he could do with others at the moment. He had to do the same and adjust as well, and he knew that Noel needed something else to concentrate on. He wanted to keep an eye on the hunter to make sure the younger man would be alright.

"More than hidden." The cheer hadn't faded the slightest at Hope's subdued tone. Noel pushed past him to step into the house, and for a few moments Hope worried that the floorboards would give way and bury the brunet. The floorboards, however, held steady even if they creaked in protest at the weight. "You said you needed somewhere out of the way. Unless you'd rather a cave, it doesn't get more out of the way than this."

"No caves." Hope agreed, and stepped in as well tentatively, careful with his weight on the floor. "I just — didn't know places like this existed anymore."

Valhalla was a collection of chrome and concrete, of metallic spires and twisted stone. Despite the mossy roads and vines up certain walls, most of the place looked strategically beautiful. Frozen in time. This place, on the other hand, looked overrun by... life. _Forgotten_ by time, perhaps. Different from the rest of the world. He was starting to understand why Noel felt so proud to find this place.

_It looks untouched by chaos._

By now, Noel seemed to have caught on to Hope's hesitation.

"Hey, it might not look like much, but—" He patted at a wall, almost making Hope cringe at the thought of mold. He might have gotten used to living on Gran Pulse, but Hope had grown up on Cocoon and that week as a l'Cie had hardened him against anything grimy, but it didn't mean that he was _used_ to it. "We can make it work! A bit of fixing, and bit of cleaning... it'll work, right? For whatever it is you wanted?"

That would depend on how large the place actually was.

Unbidden, the thoughts of structural integrity, of rotten wood and the danger of mold spores in the air, of whatever infections that the place might hold, raced through his mind. There were cases when it would be easier to start from scratch rather than 'fix up' a place, and this one certainly seemed such a situation.

Instead of commenting on that, Hope pulled out a flashlight from his pouch and shone the light through the room back toward the dark spaces. There was a staircase up, and down, and arches of doorways leading to other rooms. Other extremely spacious rooms.

He took several steps forward, ignoring the groaning of the wood and walking in past where Noel was standing, the brunet still watching his reactions and his expression.

Hope took a few moments to inspect the walls and the ceiling before turning his head just slightly back toward the hunter.

"We can make it work."

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**A/N:** So these are just little pieces and I really need to write more... ^^;; diellemabelle, I'm looking forward to your prompts! shadowdolls, eeeee thanks so much! =^^= The first game holds a lot of sway with me, but I quite enjoyed the second one as well, and well... there's so much _time_ between the second and third games (what a huge timejump!) that it makes me wonder just happened, especially when it's the same characters there... well, I really hope you enjoy the game!


	3. three weeks

**Sum of Existence **

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"You're leaving, just like that?"

He shouldn't have been surprised. Intellectually, Hope knew it had been coming for a while. The past few weeks were pure… chaos, for the lack of a better word.

"Look — you don't need me here." Noel had secured the Flame Fossil onto the harness on his back even as Hope frowned, unsure of how he felt about this. There was very little for the young man to pack, and that meant less time for Hope to — he wasn't sure what. Prevent Noel from making a stupid mistake, maybe. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to do that. The spartan quarters that had been provided for the hunter was as bare as it had been weeks ago when Hope had scanned his card through the reader for the first time to offer the free room.

Noel hadn't put anything down at all that couldn't be packed within seconds and carried on his person.

"People are going to find out. And then they'll be after me, and your Academy would be in danger, wouldn't it?"

"You think you would be thrown out if that happens?" There was a betrayed tone in Hope's voice that he tried to keep as vague as possible. That wasn't what the Academy _stood_ for (never mind that it wasn't something that could be owned). More than gathering the most intelligent that humanity had to offer, it had been created as a type of sanctuary and there was no way that Hope would throw that founding principle out the window. He had retreated to the Academy during a time of turmoil where the recently displaced former citizens of Cocoon had been clamoring for blood. It was a place of safety; of second chances and a better future. A place to achieve the impossible.

_We live to make the impossible, possible! That is our Focus._

It was a legacy.

"I think you'd do your best to make sure that didn't happen." Noel said, tying up a small pouch to the waist of his pants before he stood up straight, now waiting for Hope to vacate the doorway. "And that would just cause more trouble."

"We've dealt with trouble before." Of course they had. Even during the times Hope had been asleep for, he had managed to read up on the history of the Academy. Hundreds of years of trying to keep civil peace, of enduring terrorist attacks. He had endured that assassination attempt in 400AF, although the memory as to who held the gun was fuzzy. Academy doctors had attributed that to the traumatic experience, and Hope had bit his tongue rather than confess that when it came to trauma, an assassination attempt and a gun pointed at him was rather low on his list of things checked off the bucket list.

(Although perhaps 'Bucket List' wasn't spectacularly accurate, but 'list of crap that happened to him' sounded rather awkward and pretentious.)

Noel didn't look convinced, and Hope thought quickly.

"Noel. What happened before—" With the Goddess's death. With _Serah's_ death. With the unleashing of chaos. With their overall failure to stop what they had earmarked as the End of the World. "—No one could have predicted that would happen. Not even the Seeress. Holding onto that blame is counter-productive to the work to be done now."

"Oh yeah? And what work is that? What work am I supposed to do?" Noel held out his hands, voice sardonic.

"Haven't I done enough already?"

"Have you?" The question might have been a cheap tactic, but Hope steeled himself to go through with that argument. "Despite the changes, the world hasn't ended. People are alive; still alive and still waking up in the mornings and spending time with their families. You wanted humanity to live on, and you have _not_ failed. There wasn't anything that could have done for Ser—" He cut off, unwilling to go through with that sentence despite it being the most powerful argument he had in this arsenal to convince Noel to stay. It wasn't a topic he felt he had the right to tough; not when it was still far too painful even for him. It had to be much worse for Noel.

But Hope had considered Serah a friend as well. One of the last people he could call a friend, even if his meetings with both her and Noel had always been brief before they were off again.

_How pathetic,_ a quiet voice nagged at the back of his mind. _You barely know them, and they're that important? Isn't there anyone else?_

Sazh and Dahj, possibly. But… no one else. Not for well over a decade of life that he experienced. Not for five hundred years, if he wanted to be technical.

Sometimes, Hope dreams up a presence who had kept his head on straight. A cheerful demeanor almost like Vanille's; someone who had even traveled in the time capsule with him. But that was ludicrous. Wishful thinking, maybe.

Now wasn't the time for imaginary friends (and he was far too old for that).

"You couldn't have known." Hope trailed off, feeling the steam taken out from his words.

"That's where you're wrong. I _knew_. I knew she was Seeing things. I _knew_ it and I just told myself it was nothing, like — like if I didn't see it, then it wouldn't be true! I could have stopped her—"

No. Hope shoved himself more firmly at an angle to block to doorway and Noel's rage against himself.

"Could you have, really? If there's anything I know for sure, it's that Farrons always get their way. Don't you think she knew what was happening to her already? And would she have _stopped_ just because her own life might be in danger?"

Lightning wouldn't have. Neither would Snow or Fang and Vanille or Sazh. Noel wouldn't have. Serah wouldn't have. And Hope continued to tell himself that he wouldn't have, either. Whether that was because he was truly selfless like that or because he was trying to live up to near impossible standards, he couldn't tell.

All he knew was that all the others had been taken for greater purposes, and he had been left behind. The knowledge was still painful even after all these years: knowing that the others had been touched and gifted by the Goddess, that they had higher purposes — to fight and defend and travel through time and become more than legends and Hope… Hope was the one left to connect all the smaller pieces. He would wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and hold his breath, keeping his eyes shut and wishing that maybe there would be some message for him. A clear path of what to do and what to fight for.

As proud as Hope was of the Academy, people were wrong to praise him for the institution. It had been started by a handful of people who hadn't been him; an idea that had been sparked when he was sixteen. He had nothing to do with it. He wasn't the smartest person there, or the brightest, or the most talented.

What Hope had known was when to step back, and when to step in. It was a bizarre political dance he had found himself waltzing to, reassuring worried researchers that he would take full responsibility should things go wrong, so they wouldn't feel scared to dream up their creations.

"Of course not." Hope answered his own question, letting the words sink in before he continued, watching as Noel looked down with clenched fists and snarled, still too much anger and hatred toward himself. That was what happened when someone you loved died, after all. "You couldn't have stopped her. What you could do — what you _did_ — was stay with her all the way through. And Noel…" He lowered his voice. "I think… I _know_. Snow would have thanked you for it.

"Sometimes there aren't any right answers, and sometimes no matter what choice you make and what path you take, it always leads to the same place. And it's a place you don't want to be in. It sucks. But that doesn't mean you stop and refuse to continue. What Serah did was brave; brave and stupid." And damned if he didn't expect Noel to take a swing at him soon. "But what other choice did she have? She could have stopped, but then everyone would die. She could delegate the task to someone else, to you maybe, and then what? If you succeed, she would still have died. If you failed, everyone — including her — would have died. What Serah did was continue on, and continue on proudly on her own terms. And… and that's the best choice she could have made."

He closed his eyes, feeling and denying the need to rub at his face wearily. "You can't make her decisions for her."

There was a stillness and perfect silence for a few seconds, and Hope held his breath during that time, almost imagining that Noel had managed to make his way around him and leave in those moments.

At long last, there was a noise — almost a scoff or a choked laugh under a released breath, and Hope opened his eyes to see Noel slouched against the wall, one hand covering his face.

"…You're really something else, Hope. I should have known you didn't make Director with just that brain of yours, smart as you are."

He hadn't, not when there were plenty more brilliant than him. The position had been one not many people were willing to take, actually.

"…Noel?"

The question was tentative. Hope wasn't entirely sure what the younger man meant by that, or what he was trying to convey.

The hunter didn't move from his position. "…Saying that doesn't make anything better."

Hope swallowed thickly, tilting his head down and slouching just the slightest bit against the doorframe. "I know."

But words were all he had now. Words and faith and it was so hard to hold on to an impossible faith after what had just happened. He could question how someone could pick themselves up after tragedy, but the answer lie within his own past. He had done it before, and while he could hardly remember how he did it, Hope knew he could do it again. Humans were resilient, even more than they believed themselves to be. More than he believed himself to be.

What else could he do? He couldn't bring people back from the dead. He couldn't make things right again. All he had to go on were the memories of what his mother might say, because Nora Estheim had a knack for somehow making everything all right, even if those memories might have been tinted by Hope's childhood.

Not for the first time, he wondered if Lightning knew. If there was something else holding her back from returning now. If there was more he could do to free Fang and Vanille from their crystal sleep, because if one good thing came out from this, then it had to be the fact that at least Cocoon had finally been released and they had succeeding in freeing them from their duty… but they weren't awake. Had he truly done everything he could do? Was there more he just hadn't thought of?

"What am I supposed to do now?" Noel's question was quiet, so very quiet, and if it wasn't for the silence pervading the room, Hope was sure he would have missed it. "There's no one to fight. Can't ask Etro for another chance."

"We don't need someone else to give us another chance." Hope's words were confident. "Five hundred years ago, people thought the same of fal'Cie; that we wouldn't be able to manage without them." And that's where the Academy had stepped in, where Hope had done his best to promote the idea that people could be self-sufficient. He wasn't willing to rely on an unseen deity, no matter how grateful he was to the Goddess for his life. He believed in her and knew that she had been keeping them safe, but he couldn't just _rely_ on her. "But we survived without them, and we'll survive this as well."

"The Goddess is dead. Do you honestly think that—"

It was a brewing argument that Hope didn't want.

"But we're not dead. We're still alive, and as long as we're here, it means there's a chance things will get better. Noel, you've already proven that time travel is possible. That there are beings out there beyond our comprehension, and that there are places that exist outside of time. Maybe this is one of those places now. But if all those things are possible, then it can't be beyond us."

At that, Noel finally dropped the hand from his face, expression blank.

"If it's true that — that no one can die now, then we're going to have a lot of time to figure things out. To put things in order again. But I need you here in order to do that."

"You don't need me here." Noel said. "I can't help you."

"But you can. You're the only person left with an accurate sense of time travel. Sazh and Dahj… they didn't know where they were going or what happened to them."

"So get me one of those communications phone thing. You have those, right?"

"Noel." Maybe it didn't do to be subtle here. Hope would need a heavier-handed approach. "I need you here."

"Like I said, you don't—"

"Serah's dead." He did his best to keep any emotion out of that statement. It was a fact, nothing something he needed to get emotional about (that would work, right? To convince himself that he could wait until later to grieve?). He moved forward a step, arm still on the doorframe to block the way out, even if it was just a light touch. "She's gone, and—"

And Lightning still wasn't back. Snow had disappeared as well. While Sazh and Dahj were finally back, they had each other and… Hope never had that many friends. His team, his workmates and colleagues, had all been left behind in 13AF. Even the people he had gotten to know in 400AF were dead now. Noel was one of the three connections he had to prove he existed.

He wasn't just going to let that go. Not if he could do something about it. (Hope had always been the type to cling. First to his mother and then to Vanille, and Light, and toward the end of the l'Cie journey, even to Snow at times. Growing up meant that he had but that physical behaviour behind him, but now faced with the possibility that one of the few people he knew was going to leave — _again_, and he was always the one left behind…)

"—I _need you here_." Hope was too tired to explain, to unsure of himself to elaborate. He shook his head to clear those ephemeral and disjointed thoughts. "There's only four people alive here who knew Serah, Noel. And one of them is trying to walk away right now."

He had so few connections left…

There was a metallic _thunk_ that startled Hope out of his thoughts, and he looked up to realize that Noel had dropped his weapon again, although his grip on the handle was tight enough it turned his knuckles white. The younger man looked resigned, too emotionally strained to put up a fight.

Noel breathed out a breath, and Hope was almost sure he could feel the change in atmosphere as the hunter asked, "What do you need?"

Hope managed a tired smile.

"Want a list?"

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**A/N:** This chapter's prompt inspired by the quote: _The entire sum of existence is the magic of being needed by just one other person._ Okay, there are long pieces and there are short pieces. _ diellemabelle_, I will be working on your prompt soon! There are quite a few between this one and the one I'm working on right now, haha. At least 4-5, actually, oops. (At least you know there's going to be at least 4-5 more of these little things?) _ Jack Hargreave_, I'm actually really looking forward to writing how they split! I have a vague idea for how it happens (and honestly, it's going to be a build up of a lot of small disagreements building into one huge one). And yes, I wondered if I should have written Hope to be unaffected by how run down the place is. To be honest, that reaction is actually based on my own after having grown up on a farm and then moving to the city. When faced with mold after over ten years, my reaction had been cringing before cleaning it up. And I hope this piece sheds a little more light on what happened immediately after, although there will be more pieces (hopefully) to go into more detail on that.


	4. eight months

**Life Continues**

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"Do you hear that?"

Hope stilled where he was carrying the box of tools through the doorway. There had been something irritating him all morning, and he wasn't sure what it was.

Noel just shrugged from where he sat propped against the wall, pulling rotten boards from the window frame and tossing rusted over nails into a bucket they had designated as a trash pile.

"I've been hearing it all day," the brunet grumbled, pulling another plank of wood from the wall. Several weeks after they had settled into the run down house and his humour had dimmed at the realization of just how much work had to be done for the restoration of the place. It would put Hope's plans on hold for several months, but as time went on, he found himself alright with that.

There was something invigorating about the difference between these days and his ordinary life. It was strange to have gotten used to spending most of his days in front of a computer terminal and the glow of holographic monitors, but that was the way it had ended up. But then again, Hope had never known just what he wanted to do when he was a child, unlike so many others with goals and plans in mind from an early onset. He had ended up doing... a lot of different things in search of what it was that he was _meant_ to do, not understanding until a long time afterward that perhaps there was no _meant to_, but by then Hope had been quite adept at numerous subjects.

"You think there's a nest around here somewhere?" He asked, putting the toolbox down with the new goal of finding just where the sounds were coming from. It certainly sounded like animals, and it was probably best to get rid of them before they accidentally boarded up those creatures somewhere in the house.

The sounds were faint, just a little bit distant. But close enough that had been able to hear it for the past several minutes (how had Noel managed to hear it all day?).

"What, like birds? No way." Noel pointed up. "Those things? Definitely not birds."

"You know what they are?"

The hunter smirked, the words evident on his face: _you doubted me?_

It was an expression that Hope was finding himself extremely familiar with the past several months. It seemed that Noel was knowledgeable in more areas than he let on, and even if there was something he didn't know, the younger man tended to throw himself wholeheartedly into learning it. Carpentry, building, repairing...

All of that, however, didn't quite extend to books.

(It was quite easy to tell when Noel got bored with just sitting around and trying to pick up information from books.)

"You're not going to say?" Hope prompted after a moment.

Noel threw over the last piece of rotten wood that had started to mold against the wall, aiming far outside into the overgrown forest where it landed and disappeared within dense bushes. He dusted off his hands then, making Hope sigh at the realization that Noel had once again foregone the gloves he had provided.

"Sounds like a Cait Sith. Young, or injured. Probably the first. With the whole thing about nothing growing, I can't see the adult animals continuing to take care of the young longer than they're used to."

What a disturbing idea, Hope thought. He bit his lip to prevent himself from saying it. It was horrifying enough to realize that pregnant women wouldn't be able to give birth and would have to live with that pregnancy until they could find a way to reverse the effects of chaos. But for the young children — even the animals — who stayed young and vulnerable forever? Human parents wouldn't leave their children, at least, but he wasn't sure about... others. He didn't think they would. But it's been months and there were those creatures who lived a life time in months.

"It could be close." Hope thought for a moment, reminded of a time when he had gone clambering over everything just from the whim of curiosity, usually prompted by Vanille as they wandered off and into minor troubles. They had gone on plenty of small adventures just gathering food or water, agreeing that they didn't need to tell the others since the adults seemed to get worried far too easily. Now... he couldn't remember the last time he had wandered off without being _responsible_ about it; not since... a very, very long time. "Maybe we should go look for it."

He had always been in safe zones since he joined the Academy. Always going places already ventured by others and accompanied by groups as well. There were always plenty of people who made the first discoveries and then reported back to him, and even that time in the Yaschas Massif, the moment people had discovered what the red spheres were, he had been evacuated back to the city. It was drastically different to before the Academy had been founded, when Bartholomew Estheim would urge Hope to stay indoors and keep out of sight of grieving and vengeful people.

"What, you want to?" Noel looked surprised at the suggestion.

Hope shrugged, the movement diminutive and somewhat embarrassed. He didn't understand why it upset him that Noel seemed surprised at his suggestion. "Young or injured, it needs help."

"Heh. Thought you'd say something like that." Noel stretched his arms, and then rolled his neck with a noticeable wince as the bones cracked. With one arm against the ground, he pushed himself up from where he had been seated. "Sure, why not? I need a break from this, anyway."

"You thought I'd say...?" He let the words trail off curiously.

"Normally, the best reason to go look for potentially dangerous animals is for, well, food. Or making sure that monsters don't stray too far into territory they're not supposed to be in. Deter them before they make a habit of it, you know? Too bad, though. I could use a fight." The younger man stretched as he stood up. "Did you want to go now?"

What did that even mean? Hope thinned his lips in thought, trying not to frown. Did it just mean he thought differently than what was normal? Or perhaps logical, because those were indeed good reasons to hunt down nearby monsters.

"Yes, let's go now." There was no reason to delay, and Noel was right in that they had been working on renovations for a while. A chance would do them some good. "You said you've been hearing it all day."

"Yeah, yeah. I know where it's coming from." Without bothering for his dual swords, Noel checked on his dagger before sliding it back into its sheath. "Out south several meters. They're probably hidden somewhere that obscures sound, but it's close."

"Now it's a 'they'." Hope mused, following the other man out of the door, noting that if there really were dangerous animals around, then they really needed to get that door back on soon. The air was crisp and cool, bright sunlight streaming down from leaves on the taller trees above them, and the path dark brown and fertile.

"It was a 'they' this morning. Haven't heard it too much the past hour or so, though." Noel's steps hesitated for just a moment. "Sorry. Not sure about the 'hour' thing. Can we still use that when time doesn't work anymore?"

"Time is a word, a human invention," Hope said easily as he frowned at just how fast the path outside seemed to have overgrown. "It's a measurement for something we could never capture. The theory of time travel remained just that — a theory — until you and Serah came along."

Nearly eight months and the mention of Serah was still... painful to a certain extent.

But then again, Hope had never fully gotten over his mother's death, and it had been... over five hundred years now, chronologically.

Some pains could only be soothed, but never erased.

"You and your theories. I'm sure you would have gotten it eventually. Just a matter of time... and there I go again."

Hope huffed a laugh at Noel's disgruntled tone, ducking underneath a branch heavy with foliage and trusting in the hunter to know exactly where they were going. "It's alright to still use the term. It may be impossible to fully extract it from our daily vocabulary, given how ingrained our sense of time is."

There was a hint of blue eyes as the other turned his head for just a second. "You don't say it."

"Say what?"

"Any of it. Anything to do with time. You don't say anything like 'an hour ago', or 'two months ago'. Words like that were what you meant, right? What people use to measure time being something humans invented?"

Clever. "Yes, that's what I meant."

The sounds were getting louder now, and Hope could clearly tell it was the pitiful meowing of a weakened creature. Young. _Very_ young. He stopped at the realization that this would be the first time he would be exposed to actually seeing something that young and knowing that it would never age, never grow up to be able to defend itself. It would always be weak and vulnerable, would probably not survive long at all. And... what? It's been like this for eight months already?

How?

His eyes followed the other man as Noel crouched in front of a large bush, pushing back at the branches to reveal movement. Movement that was barely there, and a shell of an adult Cait Sith, discarded just a little away next to the limp figure of a red and white figure on the ground, curled protectively around several smaller bundles of white, furless creatures; several dozing while one in particular was wiggling and crying in squeaks.

"They're newborns." Hope breathed out, crouching beside Noel. There was the light smell of early decay in the air, and blood in the dirt. Fresh, and not from a kill. Which meant... "But how?"

Noel seemed just as bewildered. "I thought nothing was born anymore?"

Did this mean that the chaos was actually going to wear off by itself? Or...

He pushed against the bush with Noel's help (good; it seemed as if the hunter had the same idea...), half climbing inside to grab the empty shell of the adult Cait Sith, hands hesitating above the now wiggling bodies of several infant creatures, some of whom had awoken from the unfamiliar noise and were now wiggling around, eyes still closed and blind to the world as they squeaked with their heads in the air, pink and wrinkled.

Gently, Hope picked up the empty shell and unwrapped the bright yellow fabric he had tied around his wrist, shifting as Noel reached to help him hold on to the shell while he worked to wrap the fabric around the wiggling bodies — four of them, he noted as they shifted around in the warmth of the fabric, bundling closer together as Hope carefully lifted them to where Noel was waiting with the shell.

"What about the mom?"

The question tore his attention away from the newborns, and Hope's gaze fell to the corpse on the ground, still freshly dead from birthing. What had been discovered the past several months was that things still _decayed_, and plants still grew... which mean that the poor creature couldn't have given birth more than a day ago, and the remains were still fresh.

"We'll come back to bury her." Hope responded quietly. He knew that it was best to leave the corpse for other animals to find, but... "But we need to take care of them first."

He gestured to the now occupied shell, and Noel nodded in agreement.

"They'll need food." The hunter said.

They retreated from the bush, and Hope stood up again, brushing off the knees of his pants.

"I'll find something."

.

* * *

.

The next several hours were a rush of research, communication, and preparation. The first two on Hope's part and the last something that Noel had taken care of while they cleared out a space to set the shell down and Hope went to send a message to other Academy scientists (all of whom had left him contact information, insisting that he kept in contact with such a fervour that Hope had actually neglected to do so until now). He hadn't put in a direct line for communications yet, but it hadn't exactly been his top priority lately.

"They're too young to eat any of the foods we have," Noel spoke up as Hope came back with a tablet with information pulled up about Cait Sith and just what young ones might need along with several clean towels.

"We'd need to get things from the city." Hope agreed, setting everything down on the table that Noel had cleared off. Just how long had those kits been left out there? If Noel had been hearing it all day, it would have been hours at the very least. They would be weak and hungry and... were they warm enough? There were numerous dangers and pathogens to be picked up outside, not to mention that they had spent the first hours of their lives next to the corpse of their mother.

Looking at the wiggling bundles within the shell now, they seemed — what? He wasn't sure. Was it normal for them to look so weak, and for the range of their movements to be so limited? Was something wrong?

"I'll get it." Noel volunteered quietly, already pushing back from the table. "It shouldn't take more than an hour."

"Are you sure?"

He nodded. "You want to stay with them, right? I'll take one of the comms and you can figure out what we need while I'm on my way. Just to warn you, it won't take long so you need to figure out a list soon."

Hope nodded once in acknowledgement, the edge of his lips tugging into a smile. He passed over the tablet before Noel could leave. "I already have a list on here, but if there are other things, I'll give you a call."

The hunter brought two fingers to his brow in a mock salute. "Will do."

The scientist was left in silence as the other left, and he looked down at the shadows inside the shell afterward, brows knitted in thought even he as carefully made a nest of the towels he had brought out to move the shell to the centre of it.

It had been eight months since anyone had been born, and yet these kits here suggested that it was still a possible thing. There were two obvious theories: one being that the chaos was wearing off by itself, perhaps because there wasn't enough to support both Valhalla and this world. Could chaos be measured? And if it could be, was there a way to do so to understand it's effects and how it worked? He would have to figure out how to do so, would have to find a physical manifestation of chaos or perhaps track down a source. Perhaps there was some sort of energy being emitted, and if so, then he would be able to figure out just how it worked: whether there were areas in the world where the chaos gathered or avoided (like air), or whether it was an even dispersal.

If it was an energy, then it could be contained or blocked. if it was wearing off, then it would be easy enough to wait it out, and if it wasn't then there may be something he could do in order to figure out the workings of —

He brought up a gloved hand to rub at the area between his eyes. All of those ideas would be long shots. How could be prove the existence of chaos when it was something that couldn't be validated? Time was a concept whose effects came to be obvious. Chaos, however, would keep everything the same... but no. It had already manifested in the world in a very physical manner and if that could happen, then he would have to find just how it manifested. How does it work?

The other theory, of course, was much simpler. Hope had studied enough Pulsian mythology to know that certain translations confirm chaos as 'soul', and the reason why Valhalla had been infested with chaos was because it was the realm of the dead where the souls of everyone who had come and gone went to rest. If that was the case, then why would the rest of the world be involved? Just what kind of an effect did a 'soul' have, anyway? Without it, it could be said that mankind would be nothing more than animals.

In that case... did that mean the animals would be affected? Of course they were; but so was the rest of the world. Buildings shouldn't have souls, and yet the buildings and even the soil of the landscape had changed the moment that the gateway to Valhalla had released its energies. But those changes...

A pink head emerged from the shell, crawling over its siblings as a nose twitched and scented the air, stepping down into the nest of soft towels. It flailed for a moment and cried out, squeaking in question.

Hope's expression softened and he placed a hand at the edge of the towels, fingers extending to the creature to allow it to sniff at him without him actually touching the newborn. It was already bad enough they had to jostle them the first time; he didn't want to take the risk of damaging them again.

"...How did you get here?" He whispered to the squirming bundle climbing up to sniff curiously at his glove, almost afraid that speaking any louder to it may hurt the fragile animal. Was this the first born after chaos? Or perhaps not. He had spent more than a few weeks away from the rest of civilization, after all, cutting all contact with the outside world in order to concentrate on other things. Were things returning to normal in the cities? "What am I missing?"

Then again, plants continued growing in this new world, although Hope didn't know about about the normal growth of plants to deduce whether it was at a faster or slower pace than normal. If humans stopped growing and ageing, but plants continued to grow... what about animals? The theory of 'soul' was that it was an intangible substance humans possessed, but no one had ever mentioned plants and animals having it.

The blood in the forest had been fresh, and not from a kill, either. It was possible that the mother had survived birthing just long enough to clean her kits before dying; bleeding out the entire time. That meant those kits really were just born. Not eight months old and stuck in the body of a newborn.

He was snapped from his thoughts once more as he felt a light pressure on his finger and blinked to find that the kit was gnawing toothlessly at the tip of his glove, having climbed far enough to the circle of towels to be rest its body on the edge lean toward his hand.

It...

Hope couldn't find the word, but the slight pressure at the edge of his fingertip made his chest feel tight. He tilted his hand slightly to curve around the fragile creature, watching as it continued to paw at that one finger, curling tiny claws around it in an attempt to hold it in place as it continue to gnaw gummily.

The room was eerily quiet without the squeaking from that one kit, the others quiet as they had been while in the forest, and Hope wasn't sure just how long he had stayed in that position, standing next to the table with a hand curled protectively around the newborn.

It didn't matter right now, though, did it? Just which one of his theories could possibly be true, or whether it was something else completely... Right now, all the theorems paled at the realization that there was this creature right at his fingertips who needed him in order to survive.

"Hey," He finally breathed out, watching the newborn cling to his fingertip. It felt strange to be talking to the creature, especially knowing that it wouldn't understand him no matter what he said. Why was he worrying about coming up with the right words when it wouldn't matter?

But it felt right to say something, especially as he watched the pale head perk up at the sound of his voice, whiskers twitching as it scented the air in the direction of where the sound came from. Hope took advantage of that moment to stroke a thumb extremely carefully over the tiny head.

"You're going to be okay."

If nothing else, new birth after the unleashing of chaos was a miracle. It was another miracle that they had been heard by them before a predator had gotten to them. What were the odds?

It didn't matter. All the ideas and experiments he'd have to conduct could wait until just a little later, now that there was no time limit to adhere to. For this moment, for just another minute, Hope was content to stand there and watch over the kits.

.

.

.

* * *

.

**A/N:** Starting to cover that world thing and how time might work. All headcanon, granted. These were actually two little things I wrote at different times, but since it's an immediate continuation and I kind of forgot to post last weekend, um. Yeah. Have two as one. My writing has slowed down again, oops, I think it's time to shift back to Kinematics or a few unfinished Merlin stories... Or, uh. Learn to actually go back and edit things. I have a terrible tendency of never reading through my own things so there are always typos abound.


	5. one hundred years (approx)

**Reunion 1/2**

.

.

.

Hope had slammed the door when he saw Noel standing on the other side.

That didn't seem to deter the hunter, according to the pounding that came afterwards.

"That," Noel's indignation was the same as ever, tinged with... something different. "Was rude, Hope!"

"You," and he was doing his best to ignore the pounding, leaning back against the door so the younger man wouldn't shove his way in. He made sure to space to words out to hold as much venom as possible. "Left!"

"You told me to!"

Oh no, he didn't. Hope turned, and opened the door to glare at the other man on the other side of the threshold. He most likely didn't look very intimidating at all, the way his hair was mussed and untidy, having fallen asleep at his desk before he had come to answer the door. "I didn't say you should disappear for ten years!"

Noel, for his part, didn't look the slightest bit apologetic. If anything, he was grinning from where he had one arm resting at the top of the doorframe and leaning forward. Hope wondered for a spiteful moment whether he'd manage to break the other man's nose if he slammed the door right then.

"Miss me?"

Hope didn't dignify that with a response. "How did you find me?"

They hadn't parted on the best of terms, and Hope had been sick of being the one to wait around for everyone he cared about like — like some lovesick schoolgirl. Patience was something he was sick of when it came to tolerating Noel's antics, and to be quite honest... Hope was just sick of being left behind by his friends.

Within months of being left alone again, Hope had decided to abandon the home that had been built in the forest, salvaging enough parts to build a hard-line to transfer all the information that the computer sitting within its basement continued to generate. He had built a surveillance system and motion detector and... left as well.

He had moved to the outskirts of a new town they called Luxerion, keeping a cap over his hair and dressing in duller colors to keep people from noticing him... surprisingly easy with the way people had become self-absorbed with their own issues in the last hundred years. He had lived under an alias and made acquaintances and found out that he had forgotten how to make friends.

How was that a skill he could forget? Years of awkwardly trying to keep a conversation and he still couldn't do it.

A week, ago his motions sensors had detected Noel entering the house in the forest. Hope had taken a twisted satisfaction knowing that he hadn't gone back in over nine years.

Noel raised his eyebrows at the question. "I'm a hunter."

Hope made sure to give him a less than impressed look.

"And you've been teaching me how to follow people electronically for years." Noel tossed an object over, and Hope let go of the door handle to catch it with both hands, allowing (it didn't mean he wanted to) the other man enter past him as he examined the object.

It was... a home made conductor? What did that even have to do with—?

He shut his eyes a moment to sigh, wincing and waiting for the onset headache. "...You followed the signal."

It was the stupidest mistake he could have made, but at the same time, it wasn't something anyone else would have figured out unless they were intimately familiar with the way he built machines.

"You scrambled it pretty well." Noel admitted, practically falling onto the sofa and relaxing into the soft fabric. "But you're the only one who uses that energy signature around here and you told me how to build that... what? Sixteen? Seventeen? Years ago."

It said something about just how much the two of them had changed in the past hundred years that Hope took the moment to shove Noel's feet off the table. That was something he hadn't missed.

Noel snorted humorously at that. "You haven't changed at all."

Hope tossed the conductor back at him, purposely ignoring that statement. Of course he had changed. Everyone, and everything, changed with time, even if that time was non-existent. Different experiences and different societal integrities would do that. Luxerion might have been small and new, but it was unique in a way that gave him the feeling this place would flourish soon enough.

"Ten years." Hope said instead, not over that. He was sick of people up and leaving him. Whatever argument they had ten years ago, he had expected Noel to fume for a few hours, maybe a day or two, before things resuming as they normally did. He thought that the one thing they had in common, the most important thing, was that the both of them were sick of being left behind by people they cared for. That's why they had stuck together; because they both knew that feeling and just how much it hurt.

Or at least Hope had assumed Noel knew. But for someone who understood so well, he had been quite scarce the past ten years.

...Of course, Hope had ensured he would be hard to find as well.

"You could have left a message."

He couldn't decide whether it was more irritated, angry, or hurt from that. Or maybe none of that at all, because there was an intense relief as well. Hope had trusted, for all those years, that Noel would just be able to take care of himself. It was good to see that his faith hadn't been misplaced.

At the same time, it really was intensely irritating.

"You could have been dead." Hope intoned flatly, even if he hadn't believed it. Noel was far too good a fighter to be taken out like that, but... "Why are you here now?"

Maybe it was hurtful, but he had certainly felt hurt enough for the past ten years. Weren't they friends? Hope had been in constant contact with Sazh during the past ten years; had even hosted Dahj several times when the forever young boy couldn't take being so old and smothered by his father anymore. But other than them and the handful of Academy scientists that Hope had maintained contact with, things were... empty.

He wasn't sure if that was how people felt normally. To not have anything to work toward.

Noel looked sheepish for a change. "Because we're friends? I lost the phone. And I got lost! Not to mention, it's not as if you stayed in the same place. I couldn't reach you."

Hope's glare intensified. That's what his motion sensors had been for, and Noel had only gone back the week previous. "You haven't gone back this entire time."

"I got lost! And lost track of time... whatever time there is now. I got caught up, alright? Things were happening, and I took longer than I thought."

Caught up, but of course. It was like another stab at how Hope had always been the one to keep calm and wait while others who were more important would — go off and save the world. He had been a part of that once, but now everyone else had left and he was the one designated to keep an eye on things... except what use was he now?

The irritation was irrational, especially directed at Noel (but wasn't it convenient that he came back just when Hope needed to vent?).

Hope took a deep breath, counting silently to take his mind away from those topics. Close himself to that, at least until he could find a time to deal with those emotions by himself.

"You haven't explained why you're here now."

Noel's stare was piercing, and his grin had fallen to a more sombre expression. "...You really haven't changed."

"Noel."

The younger man held up his hands in surrender. "I couldn't come back without good news, right? Or at least news. So I kept looking."

"And now you have news?"

"Yeah." He leaned forward from where he had relaxed in the couch, serious. "You said before that this place — this world now, was like a second Valhalla. Similar, but not the same. So I went looking, and..."

He remembered that. It had been a theory of his early on when Noel had described what he could remember of Valhalla to him, and Hope had noted the differences. He had originally thought that perhaps it was something akin to an extension, but that theory proved futile when they hadn't been able to find the actual entrance to Valhalla.

"Hope." Noel's voice was completely serious now. "I found Lightning."

.

* * *

.

Lightning, Noel said that day he came back, was in crystal stasis.

Just like with Vanille, and just like with Fang. Most likely, with Snow as well.

Sazh's expression had been extremely sombre when Hope had told him that in quiet tones, the older man sighing dramatically and rubbing at his forehead where he sat, deep in thought. Childishly, or perhaps selfishly, Hope had given in and asked him what they were supposed to do now.

Maybe it had been weak to ask, but he just didn't know. It didn't seem fair that everyone looked to him for answers now, especially when he still had so many unanswered questions that swirled through his mind at all times. More than why everything happened, why things were happening, and how to solve it all... was the question of what was he supposed to do? How was he to know? Everything he had done, and he had done the best that he could with the time that was given to him, was give his all and try his best. But right now, with the knowledge that once again the people he cared about may have left him to never return, 'his best' didn't feel like anywhere near enough.

It felt like the future was blanked out, staticy and grained.

_White noise_, a whispered voice in his mind reminded him. What had once been a clear picture, long ago, was now fuzzy and disjointed.

Sazh hadn't been able to answer that question, instead patting him consolingly on the shoulder before he left to attend to Dahj again, the little boy who wasn't quite so little anymore.

Which meant, of course, that Hope was left alone again.

At least to deal with Noel, who had been standing with his arms crossed at the corner of the room for the duration of the conversation with Sazh, the older man greeting the hunter warmly as if he hadn't been gone for ten years without a word. When the door clicked closed softly behind Sazh, Hope breathed out a sigh and closed his eyes, pressing his forehead against the metal of the door to gather his fleeting thoughts.

Silence awaited him until he couldn't take it any more.

He had wondered how this would play out for years, of course. In the same way he wondered about all the reunions, should (when!) they happen. What Lightning might say or do, what Vanille and Fang might say and do, and even Snow and... to some extent, he wondered about Serah and Mog. Serah who was long gone and Mog who remained ever asleep, at the base of the Academy where scientist continued to come and go. Hope had gone back there a few years ago as well to check on everything and on everyone. The years had worn away at people's passions, and increased their patience. While the machines were finely tuned and clean, there was little enthusiasm for invention or creative thought. He could understand, of course. After years and years... you just get tired.

"Are you going to tell my why?" He finally spoke up, not bothering to open his eyes or turn from the door. It felt easier that way, and he allowed that feeling for several seconds before gathering up his courage and turning around, straightening up his back for the inevitable confrontation.

Noel looked exactly the same as he had the day that he left, back when they were still hiding out in the forest trying to come up with a way to bring the world back to normal. (But what was 'normal' now? It had been over a hundred years; surely some would consider the cessation of time to be the new normal.) The hunter still had the same clothes, the same haircut, and still the same grave expression with his arms crossed over his chest against the shadows of the wall.

Nothing had changed. But then again, wasn't that the nature of things now?

"Why you left." Hope clarified, knowing that the other wasn't going to explain unless he asked. And Hope was going to ask, because he felt _owed_ that explanation, at the very least. "Why for ten years."

Noel stared at him, expression unreadable in a manner he had once claimed to have learned from Hope. But the older man wasn't going to speak up any more; the ball was in Noel's court now.

They were at a standstill for minutes, perhaps a small eternity, before Noel finally relented and looked away for just a moment before blue eyes focused back on him.

"Because of you."

Somehow, Hope had known that answer already. But it didn't stop the bitter taste in the back of his throat. The two of them had always had a hard time speaking up, or perhaps forming other relationships. They were friends from necessity, perhaps, because others might see them as too awkward. Or perhaps just because they had been people well known to society when chaos had coalesced, and they were both dodging the repercussions.

(But that couldn't be it. Hope had faced the repercussions of Cocoon's fall, and that had been much different than this. This one was a quiet discontent, simmering but never coming to a boil.)

Instantly, his mind could think up at least a dozen times when the two of them had disagreed, when they hadn't been able to work together due to different ideologies and methods. Despite their similarities, they were just too different in some manners. And Hope could remember dozens of incidents throughout the years where either he or Noel had stormed off in a huff because they just couldn't see things from each other's view.

Despite that, he had always thought of them as friends.

"Me?" His question was quiet to hide his uncertainty. His hands felt cold and clammy inside his gloves as he pressed them against the cool metal of the door behind him, whether to block the way out or to ensure he might be able to run, he wasn't sure. "Because I did something?"

He hadn't meant for that to sound vulnerable. He didn't _want_ to sound vulnerable. He wanted to sound _angry_, or at least deserving of an explanation.

Hope wanted to understand. He wasn't used to puzzles he couldn't solve, and equations that yielded no answers. He was a scientist, able to discern patterns and problems and even people. There had been very little that wouldn't present him an answer: not the future, not time travel, not even building a new world. All things had solutions. All things had a definite answer.

"You said in the beginning that you needed me here." Noel said, tone just as emotionless as his expression. "So I stayed. I thought I could do some good, and—"

"And what?" Hope's tone was terse as he spoke up again after Noel trailed off. "And it just wasn't what you expected?"

Outside of Noel, Hope could remember the last time he had been so breviloquent with someone. All his years at the Academy had lent a disposition toward patience and learning to cover up any disappointment he might have with other people. The last time he had been so snappish...

Hope remembered venting to his father. And before that, it had been to the other l'Cie. But after that, there had been no one to talk to on a level that was beyond professional diplomacy.

It was putting a part of himself into the conversation to invite hurt, and now he was wondering if this was reaping the consequences. Or if this was just how things went normally.

"I never took you to be the type to jump to conclusions."

"You haven't seen me for a long time."

"Heh." Noel huffed, bringing a hand to the back of his neck in the first responsive gesture in the past while. "That's true, I guess. I wanted to explain, you know. But I wasn't kidding about how you just disappeared, too."

"Explain what?" Hope wasn't exactly in the mood to beat around the bush.

"_You_." The hunter held up a hand as Hope moved to protest. "No, wait, let me explain. I'm not—" He looked frustrated. "I'm not getting this through correctly. I don't know how you always manage to find the right things to say, but... you needed answers. We both did. _Do._ And it doesn't matter if you can figure out how things are going to happen, or a way to fix the situation, or even teach me how to do it. None of it matters unless we figure out why all of this happened. What we did wrong, or how small our part in it was."

The hunter let out a disheartened sigh. "Serah's gone. Mog won't wake. Snow disappeared. And Lightning — who knew what happened to her? I had to find at least one answer. You keep looking to the future, but you told me once that it's hard to understand the future without looking to the past. We weren't getting anywhere further and... I figured it was the right way to go."

It didn't make sense; didn't seem right. Didn't explain anything, actually, at least not to Hope. He could _understand_ it, what Noel meant, but it explained nothing to him about just why the hunter had _left_. Or, more precisely, left without him.

"You went off on your own."

Blue eyes finally looked away. "Yeah... I did."

Half of him didn't want to ask, but it didn't feel right not to.

"_Why?_"

"...I can't explain that to you right now."

But of course not. A part of him understand that the brunet would have his reasons, and yet Hope couldn't seem to grasp those reasons in his head. Not when he was the one who wanted explanations. It was so much easier to mediate when it was someone else things were happening to, and yet when he was the one owed an explanation...

No. He wouldn't push. As much as he wanted answers. Answers were never owed to him. It had always been up to fight for his own answers rather than have it handed to him. He could deal with that. Move with it.

But that didn't mean he had to have it shoved in his face all the time.

"Alright." Hope agreed, deceptively calm. He moved away from the door, but not forward. Just a sidestep. "If you can't explain it right now, then you can explain it later."

He wouldn't push.

"But until then, you can leave."

Noel looked incredulous; flabbergasted. "What?"

"You don't have to explain anything to me." Hope said, making sure that he wouldn't be in the way of the door. A long while ago, he had made sure to block the exit so Noel would listen to him. But then, he had been willing to explain and to wheedle. This time, he was too tired. Too tired of being side-stepped and bypassed. Too tired of being left behind without a second thought. Maybe if Noel could explain himself... "But you're not staying here."

"You're kicking me out?"

"Technically, you never stayed here. You came in, we talked, and now you're going to leave."

"Hope—"

"Goodbye, Noel."

The hunter took a long moment to case the validity of Hope's words before he pushed himself away from the wall and made his way to the door, pulling open the metal before hesitating. Hope wondered for a brief moment if he was finally going to get an explanation, but that thought was dashed soon enough as Noel walked through the doorway with a promise, "I'll be back tomorrow."

"No," Hope replied as he shut the door. "You won't."

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* * *

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**A/N:** Again, two parts. ^^;; There's also a third, but it should probably be by itself. Next week is a short one as I'm currently working on a... really long one-shot. Depending on how fast it gets written, I might go back to updating twice a week again with the short pieces. Currently exploring just how things turned and shifted from the second to third game so I might be jumping around in time a lot. Anyway, thanks so much for people who are actually following this story and especially for the comments and encouragement! But about this part... yeah. There's going to be a few disagreements and arguments. It happens when you stay with someone for a really long time?


	6. fifteen years

**Split Chores**

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The yelp from above wasn't anything unusual, but the _thud_ followed by the flood of amateur cursing certainly was.

Hope took a moment to slide up his visor and look up at the ceiling where the light fixtures were still wobbling unsteadily from whatever had just happened.

"Noel?" He called out curiously to his flatmate, not overly concerned despite how the newly rebuild building seemed to disagree with him on its concern.

It took a long moment before an "I'm okay!" echoed down the stairs, and Hope nodded absentmindedly as he switched his attention back to the microchips he had been working on. He wasn't exactly an expert at building or fixing them, so it would take a few more hours before he could finish —

There was another _thunk_ accompanied by the shaking of the wall this time and a loud yowl.

"Could use some help here, though." The hunter called out, sounding disgruntled.

...Or not.

Hope couldn't even bring himself to sigh over his (once again) delayed project. He really should have expected it, with the recent happenings around the house. Fifteen years and the three Cait Sith had finally entered an adolescent stage, in which anything that might have resembled sweetness in them was stripped away and in the past few weeks it had been a game for them to one up each other in mischief.

He gave himself just a moment to entertain the idea of throwing the kits outside and then letting them reintegrate into the wild they were supposed to have grown up in. Maybe a few more moments.

In the end, he took off the visor and pushed away from the table, giving himself a count till five before he got up and headed upstairs, sure now that whatever was waiting up there for him would be a headache to sort out.

What he hadn't expected was to find Noel sitting on the flooded kitchen floor, towers of white foam and bubbles everywhere and holding on to the collars of two pitiful looking and soaked through miniature Cait Sith who both had their ears flat against their skulls in shames and meowing diminutively. The hunter had several soap suds stuck in his hair as well, wet strands on one side that spoke of how he must have slipped and fallen before he called out.

...How did that even happen? He didn't even know they had enough soap to do all of that...

"Well." Either way, he couldn't keep the humor out of his tone or the smile that was fighting into existence as he leaned against the doorway, careful of the wet floor. "It looks like you have things well in hand."

Noel didn't look very impressed and shook one of the Cait Sith at him, the creature wiggling and meowing before turning large and pleading eyes in Hope's direction. Not that the scientist was going to do anything for it seeing as this had been happening for the past several _weeks_.

Sometimes, it felt like the worst thing to deal with slowed growth. This period wasn't supposed to last this long normally if not for the fact that they were prepared for it having to raise those kits for fifteen years already.

"Oh, no," Noel retorted, hands automatically grabbing again at a collar as the other kit tried to wiggle loose. "I saved you the best part. You can get the cat from hell, since _he_ decided to start this."

The cat from—? Oh, no.

Sure enough, at that moment Hope heard the yowl again, this time zooming toward him fast enough that he ducked as something shot past him... that something being the last of the brood, half lost inside the airborne shell that had carried him and his siblings back from the forest. Airborne and apparently out of control, the way the shell bounced off a wall (the second sound he had heard downstairs), hard enough to rattle the kit inside and send it screeching and clawing to get out, entirely unsuccessful as the shell started to fly in another direction.

Noel looked entirely too cheerful as he waved the pitiful looking kits at him in a strange mock salute.

"You catch him, and I'll clean this up. It's your turn."

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* * *

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**A/N:** A short, as promised! Still working on that long one, hmmm. Also have a cat bugging me every time I turn my attention to the keyboard, oops. Makes it a teeny bit hard to write. AlphaGammaSigna, I'm really glad you agree with that ending! I can't get it out of my head that Hope must be so sick and tired of waiting for people who leave him behind, no matter what he says or how noble their intentions are. I've currently started a prompt from diellemabelle, but will work on the confrontation scene about Snow, Summer Memory! It's a very good point that I just glossed over (most things are glossed over in this series of ficlets) and I'm not sure if we'll actually meet Snow, though. He'll be in Lightning Returns, but was he there _before_ then?

Also hope that everyone in the Boston area stay safe! Things are going on as I'm writing this...


	7. hundred fifty years

**The Great Fire**

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Hope dreamt of smoke and fire.

He was at the Hanging Edge, once again small and slow, heavy with exhaustion and limbs shaking from fear. His fingers felt cold even as he clenched his fists tightly and tried to shake the numbness away. There were people screaming in the background, the heat and the smell of burning flesh and metal thick in the air.

It was hard to breathe, even. Had to move even as the hand in front of him continued to pull him along, continued to keep a tight grip even as he tripped over bodies, his stomach coiling in his stomach at the expressions of horror and pain on the faces of strangers whose skin was half burnt off.

It almost smelled like a barbeque.

"C'mon!" The feminine lilt called out in front of him, prompting him to tear his gaze away from the dozens dead and scattered all over the ground, thrown like discarded dolls. "We've got to hurry!"

_Vanille_. Hope twined his fingers with hers and allowed her to pull him along faster, focusing instead on the bounce of her hair as she ran, wincing each time an explosion occurred too close to them. The Purge robes were heavy; thick and cloying somehow as if it was preventing him from breathing properly.

"Where—?" He gasped out the question, not understanding how it was that he couldn't seem to get his vocal cords in gear. The more he concentrated on the scene, the slower he appeared to be moving. And Vanille was going faster and faster, dodging structures and easily jumping over burning areas in a manner that shouldn't be possible.

He was having a hard time keeping up, stumbling and slowing, so scared and trying so hard to keep his grip on her hand that he was fairly certain his grip should be painful by now. But she took no notice, and didn't even look back at him as she kept going, bright hair bouncing even as his fingers slowly started to slip from hers.

_No, wait!_ Except his voice was gone, entirely gone, as Vanille escaped his grasp and Hope struggled to catch up to her in this landscape of fire. It had warped and changed and didn't look like any place he knew anymore — if he lost Vanille now, he'd be lost forever, he just knew it. Lost in a place he didn't know, alone with nothing but corpses and pain and —

A hand grabbed on to his leg, and Hope fell heavily face first on the ground, hitting his chin hard and tasting blood in his mouth even as he cried out in panic. It took him a moment to push himself up enough to attempt to scramble away, to turn and look at what caught him.

It was a little girl, blonde and bleeding and broken... or not. Not the little girl. It was a Carbuncle doll that the girl was holding on to, the puppet reaching out to grab him in a death grip around his ankle, button eyes staring at him accusingly.

But she hadn't been in the Purge — she hadn't been because Hope recognized her from Palumpolum and —

"L'Cieeeee..." The doll hissed at him, tightening its grip to the point where Hope cried out, certain that any more pressure and it would break his ankle. He was trying to get away, except it was no use because everywhere was fire and smoke and now that he looked, there were dolls everywhere; some ripped and torn with stuffing everywhere and catching fire, and others covered in blood and dirt, slowly crawling their way toward him.

He could see them surrounding him, feel them and hear them making their way toward him, and there were _hundreds_ of them. He couldn't get away, couldn't shake the one doll off enough to get _away_—

"Your fault." He could hear, murmured from the dolls in tandem. "Your fault, your fault, yourfault, yourfaultyourfault—"

"Stop!" Hope could feel his heart pounding in his chest, hear it in his ears. It was suffocating, deafening, terrifying. He kicked at the doll with his free leg, crying out and feeling his stomach lurch as the doll's grip tightened even as it flopped about limply, the little girl's corpse doing the same as if it were an extension of her. "Stop it! Just stop!"

It felt a miracle when the grip loosened just enough that he managed to get away, to push himself up even as dozens of other dolls reached toward him, inches away from his skin. Hope pushed himself to his feet on shaking hands, ignoring the pain in his ankle as he ran over the small forms of dolls, running and running from them even as they gave chase. He had to find Vanille, had to catch up to her and —

The fires finally gave way to an frozen ocean, waves high above his head carved out of crystal. In the midst of the large sea of calm, still heated and smelling like smoke and brimstone, were a circle of statues and two unmoving figures.

Hope took an unsteady step toward the circle, bringing a hand up to cover his nose and mouth in a feeble attempt to block the smell.

"Vanille?" He hated that he sounded so small and scared; so unsure. "Light?"

Except the figures in the middle of the circle weren't Vanille or Lightning. Instead, Hope drew a sharp breath as he recognized his mother's broken form on the ground, limbs disjointed and pale hair a halo around her head, dark reddish black liquid seeping out from underneath her skull. And above her...

Above her, hunched over her broken figure, was his father, expression blank and looking so much _older_...

Surrounding them was a circle of crystal statues. Hope didn't remember walking toward the area, but he was _there_ and he could see all of them so clearly. Fang, Vanille, Lightning, Snow, Serah, Sazh, even Dajh... they were all crystallized. All of them frozen in this landscape. They had all left him; all of them —

"Dad," Hope choked out as he dropped to his knees beside Bartholomew, voice thick and gloved hands grabbing clumsily at his father's arm. His mom... she was just lying there, her eyes still open and he couldn't help but stare because they were the same eyes he saw in the mirror every morning and _he couldn't, _he couldn't do this alone! "Dad, we need to get out of here. Dad, please—"

It was as if the man couldn't hear him, couldn't even see him or notice that he was there despite how hard Hope was shaking his arm, eyes darting back from where he came every several moments and tensing in fear at the scraping sounds — at the _knowledge_ — of what was going to happen.

The dolls and the fire, and everything smoke and ruins.

He could see them encroaching already, tiny forms shrouded in liquid fire rolling forward on the crystal ground. He could smell the smoke, feel the heat... He was surrounded, and his friends were crystals and his mom was there dead and his dad wouldn't hear him —

"Hope." Vanille's voice interrupted his panic, and he felt thin arms wrap around his head and shoulders, protective and cool in the burning heat of the flames. "You've got to wake up. It's just a dream; you need to wake up!"

Dream...? But no! He could _feel_ it and... and!

Vanille's tone was uncharacteristically panicked. "Hope Estheim! If you don't wake up this _instant_, I will never forgive you!"

.

* * *

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Hope shot up from his bed, eyes wide and gasping for breath as he heard the splintering and crash of his door, the glow from beyond that burning his eyes and making him cough, unable to catch his breath...

No. Wait. That wasn't the light. There was a silhouette at his door, and a voice yelling his name, but the burning of his eyes and the coughing wasn't due to the cough at all. The fire — the fire and the smoke had followed him from his dreams. It was enough that he couldn't breathe, and he grasped at his shirt, the feeling of the dream and being fourteen again slowly wearing away as he appraised his current situation. What was — ?

"Hope!" It was Noel that had been at the door, Noel who was charging in with... a cloth to his face?

The hunter grabbed him by the arm, crouching down in one smooth move and using his other hand to grab something from his pouch, which was promptly placed over his face.

The heaving cough died down after that as he brought a hand up to the blessed object to find an air filter mask.

The smoke! The fire!

His eyes widened as he realized that the haze wasn't just his vision blurring, and that the room was covered in a thick cloud of black smoke, and he was damp with perspiration, the walls around him radiating heat. _Fire_.

"We've got to go _now_!" Noel called out through his mask, once he was sure he had Hope's attention. He pulled away quickly to cover the length of the room in two steps, pulling open the closet door and grabbing at jackets and shoes. "This whole place is coming down. Some bastard must have _gassed_ everyone and then started the fire."

The brunet pulled a bottle from his side and then doused the clothing in water before carrying that over, throwing the rest of it over Hope, who drew back and sputtered as the cool liquid dripped down his hair to fall into his eyes.

But that was all the time he allowed himself to be confused, as Hope quickly moved into the soaked shoes and jacket, thankful for Noel's foresight. He'd have to ask just how the hunter knew what to do in a fire.

"What about the others in this building, then?" He demanded, yanking on the jacket that didn't seem to watch to cooperate while wet. He got up from the bed quickly to follow Noel out as the hunter ducked and stayed away from the walls. Once they were out of the room, Hope's eyes widened as he saw just how much damage had already incurred. The curtains he had drawn over the windows were set ablaze, with patches of the ground reddish orange and starting to spark. Some of the wall had already started to melt away, the wallpaper blackening and curling.

"There are groups getting them out." Noel called back, and pulled him through the doorway when he decided that Hope was taking too long. "But I'm going to—"

"Help them. I know." Hope reached up a hand to grasp at Noel's wrist right before the hunter could pull away. "I'm going, too."

Noel looked like he was going to argue for a minute, but then narrowed his eyes and nodded, jaw tight.

"Don't get yourself hurt."

It was hours and hours before the last citizen of Luxerion was evacuated from the burning buildings, even with the help of hundreds who dashed in and out of dangerous fires and toppling buildings in order to grab children and trapped civilians. Others volunteered with small healing spells and an even greater amount tried to put the fire out with water and magic, to no avail.

There were plenty of people that had to be carried out, unable to wake for some reason. Others had gotten up with enough shouting and pounding at the door, groggy and panicked when the realized what was happening.

The wildfire passed through Luxerion and burned everything within hours... but as luck would have it, despite a numerous amount of severe burns, there were no casualties.

It was nearing night again when Hope finally sat down again in the cool (and more than a little damp) grass besides Noel, who was covered in splotchy bits of ash and covering his face with one arm, sprawled out on the ground in exhaustion.

Hope allowed himself a small, relieved sigh as he sat, feeling his skin stretching uncomfortably with each movement he made. Light burns, he thought distantly. He'd have to get that looked at... later. It wasn't serious, especially compared to what had happened to others.

"How did you know?" He finally asked, voice grating from shouting all day... getting people organized, shouting at those who had been asleep, and then shouting over the amount of crying and wailing that could be heard throughout the day.

There was a long moment, but eventually Noel shrugged, arm still covering his face.

"I was out in the streets." The hunter replied, sounding equally tired. "Just... walking, and the next thing I knew, there were these people shaking me. Crying. And I could smell... smoke; could see a few fires — in a lot of different buildings. Those people — it was this family. I think. Mom, dad, little girl... it was the girl that woke me. Ran away from her parents to help other people in the streets. Heh." He let out a breath, lips twitching into a sardonic smile. "I keep forgetting that even the little girls now are old and experienced."

"...They were awake?"

Hope didn't want to think in a negative light, but it was strange. Gas? Fire? It meant there was a perpetrator.

"Yeah." Noel didn't acknowledge the suspicion in Hope's tone, although he did pull his arm away to look at his friend, gesturing with a hand. "The mom, apparently, had some kind of illness. Something that needed a breathing thing, so she gets oxygen straight from a machine on her belt. Meant she was never affected, and freaked out when people started dropping like flies. She woke up her family, and then her family woke others..."

He shrugged. "...We got lucky. You can probably find them and talk to them if you want."

Hope dared a glance at the group of uniformed men and women who had taken over the scene, providing blankets and water, most of them by now just taking statements. Once, he had done the same, and even when he couldn't be there, he would get all the reports. Everything that happened in the newly budding Academia had been a part of his concern, and even beyond that when the provisional government had started running things by the Academy.

He shook his head. It had been too heavy a burden, too much of a responsibility. Even for those few, short years; it might have been a terrible thing to remember, but there had been a time in his childhood when he had no real ambition to be anything when he grew up. Hope had never wanted to stand out of the crowd.

He had, though. Because of a duty he could never tell himself was fulfilled. Hope never felt like his work was finished, not when everyone else worked so much harder and gave so much more to keep people safe and ensure they all had a future.

Like Lightning. Like Vanille...

"...No." He breathed out. "They've got it covered."

Noel didn't look convinced, and followed his gaze. "Aren't you curious? Someone just burned down a city; almost killed thousands of people!"

Hope nodded toward the uniformed soldiers. "They'll find them. If I know anything about the Guardian Corps... they won't rest until the threat's been apprehended."

No matter his experiences with soldiers had been as a l'Cie, the military hadn't let him down during Cocoon's restoration before, or afterward. Even if part of his faith in them came from Lightning's praise for the people she worked for and with.

He wondered if he should feel shattered that he had lost his home in Luxerion. The two of them had stayed there, on and off, for nearly fifty years. For some reason, though, the material loss felt... almost freeing. It felt good to not be recognized in a crowd anymore. Liberating.

"So you're just going to just leave it up to them." Noel sounded dubious, prompting Hope to look back and see the skepticism. "Somehow... I really don't believe that."

Hope allowed a smile. "I said they'd catch whoever did this."

"What, but you're going to catch them first?"

The scientist shook his head. "I'm more focused on what we can do to make sure something like this never happens again."

Noel groan, and rolled away from him in the grass. "No more of your science and technobabble..."

"Come on, Noel." Hope made sure to sound _extra_ cheerful as he leaned over to nudge the hunter's shoulder, ignoring the weak protests ("Leave me alone!" and "I don't want to study!") and batting of his hand. "Let's figure out how to make things flame retardant."

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* * *

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**A/N: **Long piece still not done, mostly because it was about a bomb on a train and I thought with recently events, I'll give it a little while before I continue (even if I started before Boston happened? It still feels like it would be in bad taste if I worked on it now). This piece is a bit iffy to me, but I imagined Luxerion a little like San Francisco... lots of fires. XD; And I have a tendency of writing dream sequences when I get stuck, which is what started this. Um. Symbolism. Yeah.


	8. eighty five years

**Prompt: **from diellemabelle! _Hope is looking up at the stars, contemplating whether other stars and planets are experiencing this "timelessness" as well, and what it would mean for the galaxy... etc. Meanwhile, Noel is laying beside him but he's watching some ants or other small creature and brings up what it would be like for them- because bugs generally have a very short lifespan - what would it be like to be an old bug? I think it would be cute to contrast the realistic and concrete thinking of Noel to the theoretical and abstract thinking that Hope is capable of._

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**Earth and Heaven**

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Sometimes, there were days when they didn't really do anything. Sometimes, there were nights like that. Hope didn't even know what day of the week it was anymore... or month. He had started counting by years rather than days, and seasons passed by leaving only their lingering sweetness.

It had been an extremely hot day, augmented by the whirring of computers, and the night wasn't all that much cooler. If anything, the only thing that made the night bearable was the breeze outside, far too light to be felt indoors and prompting the two of them out into the cool grass of the forest that constituted as their front yard, nearly a mile away from the actual building to a patch of open space next to a river where the trees had grown away from.

The sound of rushing water was loud with the accompaniment of an insect orchestra, each one louder than the last to draw attention; loud enough to make Yuel twitch an ear, and then his tail seconds later. Unsurprisingly, the old Cait Sith was resting half in Noel's lap as the two men settled down by the river to enjoy the cool breeze.

Hope leaned back into the grass with his eyes closed for a few long minutes just enjoying the cacophony of noise, relaxing as the temperature slowly cooled to allow him to focus again. His brain felt like a computer — too much heat and it would fry and shut down. He could almost imagine that being the case, with how slow his thought process felt lately.

He felt... stretched out. Tired. Be it because of the heat or because of the years, Hope wasn't entirely sure. It may be an amalgamation of both, or perhaps mostly the later punctuated by the former. But that was all right. It wasn't a painful stretch, even if it was a dull ache at the edge of his mind, buzzing along with the insects.

It was only in quiet moments like this that he questioned just when the ache had developed, most of the time so quiet under his skin that he didn't notice. Like static, or... white noise.

He turned his eyes up to the sky in an attempt to ignore the stretched feeling again, focusing on the bright shine of stars. Hope had never seen them shine as bright as he had down on Gran Pulse, and then afterward after Chaos had consumed the remains of Cocoon, the sky just got brighter. Without Cocoon lighting up the night sky, it was all so...

"Radiant." Hope whispered softly, reaching out a hand in a vague attempt to grab at the shining lights in the sky.

There was a shifting sound next to him, and he heard a light huff of laughter.

"Maybe we should head home." Noel said softly between laughs. "Sounds like you're half asleep already."

It took a moment, but Hope shook his head, the movement barely perceptible.

"I was just wondering," Hope said, feeling breathless. "Just how far the effects go."

"Effects?"

Hope closed his hand in the air, shivering as a light breeze brushed past and he brought his arm down, still unused to being without his gloves. It had been far too hot this summer for any extra layers, but Hope had never quite gotten accustomed to a going without a layer between his hands and the world.

"Of time," the scientist whispered, and then turned his head over to face Noel's curious expression. "There has to be worlds out there in the sky still, and what if they've been touched by the effects of chaos and don't know why or how it came to be about? What if they aren't affected at all? If that's the case, is there a distance limit? Would things go back to normal if someone were to escape the pull of Pulse?"

Hope let his bare fingers curl in the scratchy blades of grass below him. "Or are we infected somehow? If we were to leave, would we take this timelessness with us to the stars, where the push and pull of gravity differs from what we consider normal?

"Or maybe..." His words slowed and quieted, "The lack of aging is prevalent through the universe, and we were the exception to the rule. Have recent events transcended us to fit in with the stars, or are we now the outcasts?"

"...Heh." Noel rested a hand in Yuel's thick fur. "You think too much, Hope."

Hope allowed himself a wry smile. "You don't think about the stars?"

"What's the point?" Noel asked. "They're stars. They light up the sky. They make sure the world never goes truly dark, but they can't be reached. We've got enough to worry about down here. Taking on the trouble of the stars doesn't seem like a move we should make yet."

"Unless..." Hope's expression softened, a raw _want_ in his chest — for peace, and for a resolution — so intense he could feel the muscles in his throat responding and knew that his expression probably showed something too dreary for him to normally reveal. He closed his eyes and swallowed thickly. "It's a way of escaping everything."

He exhaled, remembering a hymn he had uncovered at one of the digs back when he had still been a teenager. Back then everything had felt new and exciting, no matter how lonely he had been. Discovering words from a pre-Cocoon era had been... he had been so elated, breathless with wonder as each word was translated.

"_Is a better home awaiting?_" He recited, words slow and remembering the verse that had prompted people to seek shelter and safety on the floating paradise being built. "_In the sky, in the sky?_"

"Hey." Noel's soft protest was punctuated with a gentle jab at Hope's side. The scientist opened his eyes again in time to see the hunter roll over, closer now with the Cait Sith hissing in disappointment before climbing on Noel's back instead as the brunet pulled up blades of grass. "Everyone wants to run, you know. But the further you run, the less questions get answered. Going up to those stars? We'd never know how things work out here."

Noel tossed the grass over at Hope, who flinched away as the smell of grass landed near his nose.

"Don't worry about things you can't reach." Noel said simply with a hint of a smile. "You already worry too much."

Things he couldn't reach, however, included a solution for their current dilemma. And what was worse was that he had already gotten _used_ to it, as if agelessness was the norm and he would expect to wake each day to the same sun and the same eyes to see it with, because he would never change and the universe aged so slowly that how could he tell if the stars were dying in the sky?

"You're not worried, then?"

It might be a slow concern, faded by the years as eventually everything did.

"Sure I am." And Noel's voice held a note of nostalgia... or perhaps that was wistfulness. "Or maybe not... worry. We did everything we could, and people are okay."

Yuel was padding his way up Noel's back to sniff at the blades of grass he held up near his shoulder for the old Cait Sith, whiskers twitching for a moment before the creature dismissed the offering and laid his head down on Noel's shoulder.

"I wonder, though," the hunter continued, throwing the blade of grass back onto the ground. "We don't age. But everything else... does. But it's slow, and isn't that strange to them? We can't be the only one who feel it — like we're surpassing a limit."

His words drifted off, and he laid his head down on his hands, listening once more to the cacophony of cicadas.

"How many years," He wondered aloud, "Have we been listening to the same insects out here? To normally live for days or months and then ending here for years and years without end... just how does that feel?"

Hope was silent for a while after that question, just listening to the noise surrounding them. His response felt slow.

"...I guess we'll find out in a few hundred years."

Insects, Hope thought, mind fuzzy and soft with the warmth and maybe a form of affection for these moments of quiet contemplation, bolstered by pleasant company and an orchestra of nature behind him. It wasn't so different from his own thoughts. For what were humans but mere insects to the stars?

If those glittering lights in the sky had thoughts, he wondered, then maybe one of them might be like Noel: pondering about the lives of humans on this small planet, affected by forces they couldn't control.

"Hey," Noel prodded him again minutes later. "Now you _are_ falling asleep. C'mon, it's time to go home."

"Let's not." Hope breathed out, words barely audible and eyes still shut. "Let's just stay out here tonight."

"We'll be eaten by Behemoths."

Had he been more lucid, Hope may have argued that Behemoths didn't pass through the green areas, and that the worst that could happen was them being smothered by a flan, but even flans didn't attack randomly unless they were provoked, or if there were intruders. Instead of saying all that, he just breathed out evenly before drawing in another breath, letting his mind rest from thoughts of computer codes and stars and the future.

Noel gave a soft snort and shook his head before rolling over on his back once again, arms spread wide around him as Yeul curled by his side.

"Stars, huh." He breathed out, looking into the sky. "Guess they're not that distant for you."

He reached up with an arm, the same gesture Hope had made before, and closed his fingers around the lights in the sky. It felt ephemeral, glimmers of imagination caught in the palm of his hand.

"Nah." Noel decided later, bringing his arm down again. "I think I'll stay down here."

There were still too many things to take care of.

.

.

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* * *

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**A/N:** Waaai, but this prompt is so cute! ^^ I have to admit that I was very heavily influenced by Bioshock Infinite's version of _Will the Circle be Unbroken_ when writing this as well (to the point where I had it on repeat through this prompt _and_ included a portion of the lyrics). It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that Booker Dewitt was voiced by our very own Troy Baker (aka Snow Villiers)! The duet version of this song between Troy Baker And Courtnee Draper is so amazing, and I'm sad they didn't release that as part of the soundtrack. I feel like one of the song verses describes this prompt perfectly as well:

_**You remember songs of heaven  
Which you sang with childish voice,  
Do you love the hymns they taught you  
Or are songs of earth your choice?**_


	9. twelve years

**Unexpected Guest**

.

.

.

Hope had been more than a little surprised the day he found Dajh sitting on his doorstep, looking as if the young boy had been there for a while, quietly preoccupied with an old fashioned book. He had stepped out due to one of the generators being a little spotty, and had been intent on fixing it when he nearly tripped over the little boy.

"Dajh?" He blinked. "What are you doing here?"

Perhaps not the most pertinent of questions, but it was relevant never-the-less. Hope had kept in contact with Sazh over the years, but the young boy had been coveted by his father and Hope hadn't thought to speak with him often.

"Hi, Hope." Somehow, despite the little boy's voice still being too young to be left on his own, the way Dajh spoke, the cadence of the words, belied a weariness far beyond his years. "I was going to call first, but... um. I wanted to speak to you in person instead."

It was jarring to hear, but Hope smiled and stepped to the side, opening the door further. The generator could wait. "Would you like to come in?"

The little boy got up, carrying his book along with him, and gave a tentative smile and a murmured 'thanks' before he made his way into the house and Hope closed the door behind him. Hope was at a slight loss as for what he was supposed to do. In any other case with a guest, he'd offer coffee and tea, yet...

Dajh wasted no time in making himself at home despite never having been to that house before, climbing over the couch until he found a proper niche and settling in with a satisfied sigh. Meanwhile, Hope lingered at the edge of the room, uncertain what action to take.

"Does your father know that you're here?" He finally asked, seeing as it was a question he could get away with and no matter what the answer, maybe he might get a few answers out of Sazh.

"Well..." Dajh looked abashed. "That's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about..."

Oh, _no_.

Before Dahj could finish the sentence and Hope could properly react to it, a white and red blur rushed into the room, hissing and spitting as it raced around Hope's legs to hide, following by another, slower and clumsier, form; the second happily tackling the first around the bend of Hope's legs, completely ignoring the humans in the room.

Dajh's eyes lit up. "You've got Cait Sith!"

"...Unfortunately, yes." He thought it was rather telling to add the first word, as the kits tussled and bit at each other around his ankles. Hope just stepped over them to ensure he was out of harm's way. Too many accidental scratches had reminded him that ignoring the kits wasn't always enough.

But they weren't supposed to be out, considering what time it was.

"Excuse me." Hope managed before he grabbed both kits by the scruff of their necks, ignoring the protesting meows as he made his way down the hall with them, and feeling Dajh's curious eyes on him. The door at the end was open just a crack, and Hope nudged it open more to hear Noel cursing as the last kit hissed and splashed water at his face.

"I've got the escapees." Hope said, suddenly glad that the hunter had volunteered to take over most of the feeding and washing of the Cait Sith in exchange for Hope teaching them (after several months of failure) just how to use a litter box.

"You little _brat_." Noel ignored Hope's presence completely as he wiped soap suds from his hair as the Cait Sith in the bath flicked his tail at the human in irritation. "You either behave or I'm skinning you for a coin purse and giving you to the city girls for — hey! Stop that!"

Hope dodged the splash expertly as Noel sputtered from splash delivered from the smug Cait Sith kit.

"Oh, that's _it_!" Noel nearly lunged into the tub to grab at a yowling and suddenly panicking kit, and Hope managed an amused exhale before he dropped the other two squirming kits into the bathwater as well.

"Call me if you need help." He said. "Dajh is over, so I'll be outside."

That sparked Noel's attention, as he turned his head as soon as he got his hands around the screeching Cait Sith. "Sazh is here?"

Hope shook his head. "Just Dajh, from what I can see. I'll tell you what's going on when I find out."

Noel nodded, expression more serious for just a moment before he yelped as the other two kits tried to climb up his arms in order to get out of the water, both of them mewing pitifully.

"Oh no you don't," The hunter declared even as Hope brought a hand to his face to cover up his smile, backing toward the door and making sure it was properly shut this time. "This is what you get for thinking your litter box is a good hiding spot when you're wet!"

Dajh, Hope saw, was perched on his knees on the couch, peering over the back of the furniture with wide eyes.

An unearthly yowl could be heard from the bathroom, joined by two other voices, and Hope felt his smile strain.

"Don't worry about that." He said. "I'm sure Noel has them in hand."

"You've got baby Cait Sith!" Dahj repeated. "Dad never told me about that."

"I think that's more because your father doesn't want you to get ideas. Cait Sith and Chocobos don't always get along. ...But if that were the case, I'd have suggest you have babysit them for a day. Then you might have second thoughts about them." Hope shook his head. That wasn't the point he wanted to bring up. "Does he know where you are?"

The little boy deflated a bit, slouching into the couch to hide half his face. It had been a tactic Hope used plenty of times when he was young, and was easily identifiable enough to know that there was trouble ahead.

"Can you please just tell him I'm here and that he _shouldn't _look for me?" Dahj pleaded, sounding small.

So Sazh _didn't_ know where his son had gone.

"Look," Dajh continued. "I know I should tell him, and that he loves me, and I _know_ he's a great dad and all. It's just—"

The young boy let out an explosive sigh. "I know I don't look it, but I'm _eighteen_ this year. And he keeps — he keeps treating me like I'm six! I just want some space; I want to be able to go out and I'm sick of telling him that I'm all grown up."

"Dajh..."

"I _know_ he'll say it's okay if you tell him that I'm staying over for a bit. Please, Hope? He actually listens to you!"

Maybe it was the words, or maybe it was the inflection... Dajh's voice still sounded hopelessly young, after all, but the scientist found himself wavering. Logically, it was best to just call Sazh and tell the truth — that he hadn't expected Dajh to show up on his doorstep. The man would come and collect his son, and then that would be that. Parents were precious things, and Hope could easily sit the little boy for hours and talk his ears off about how he should listen to his father.

But he also remembered being that frustrated; in another lifetime. And Dajh being eighteen now... not for the first time, Hope felt... really old. Not just in the sense that he had been born well over five hundred years ago, either. He wondered how Noel would respond to that: the hunter had been eighteen when chaos had been unleashed. Would he be able to relate better?

Maybe not, from what Noel had told him of the upbringing he had. Unlike in the society Hope had grown up in where eighteen was still a young and rebellious child, for Noel, he had long been an adult.

Even now, in this different world, eighteen was... what was it? Too young, possibly. Twelve years into chaos, and eighteen was so very young. Most people who had survived would be older than that.

When had Hope last felt like a child? It had been long before he was eighteen. Perhaps fourteen. That had been the last time he felt he could hide behind others, and complain about things like family and school and friends.

After that, things had... changed.

Maybe it was because Dajh still _looked_ six, but Hope didn't want that to happen to him yet. He could understand why Sazh would hide his son away from the world. They both knew how cruel and terrible the world could be, especially to children. But from Hope could remember... it was crueller still to not allow them a semblance of freedom.

Eventually, it was Dajh's pleading expression that broke him.

"...I can't promise anything." Hope finally relented. "And... you have to tell me _why_ you're here. Not just because you wanted to get away from your father for a while. But why you needed to, what happened, and why _here_."

At that, Dajh deflated a bit but nodded in agreement.

Hope made his way to the phone then, knowing well enough that Sazh tended to be overprotective about his son, and the sooner he knew where Dajh was, the better.

It was, apparently, a call that Sazh had been waiting for, seeing as it didn't ring even a full time before the call picked up, Sazh's voice an anxious, "Hello?!"

"Sazh." He tried to keep his tone gentle and soothing. "It's Hope. Dajh is fine. He's here with me right now. We're at my place, and—"

He had to hold up a hand to stop Dajh's protests about telling his father where he was _exactly_ because 'then he'll just come and get me!' while he waited for Sazh to stop ranting about having a teenaged son prone to 'running off and giving his old man heart attacks!' on the phone.

"I know. I know you're worried." It was best to just agree with whatever Sazh was saying, after all. "But I promise you he's safe, and it sounds like you could both do with some time to yourselves right now."

Hope could hear Sazh's sigh over the phone, echoed by Dajh burying his face in a cushion and groaning.

"...I'm guessing this has been a long time coming."

"Ain't just that." Sazh admitted after a moment. "Now, I can understand how he feels, but... Dajh is my boy. And no matter what he tries to say, he's still _six_. He thinks he's all high and mighty, turning that big one eight... but hell. Boy can still barely reach the stove. What's a father to do when his physically six year old son wants to go out by himself? Now you tell me that. Wouldn't be so hard for some stranger to just grab him and run."

There wasn't an answer. Not when everything was changed and skewed. Dajh had it the worst out of the lot of them, being so young... but even he hadn't been the youngest when chaos had hit. Hope didn't know what happened to the infants and toddlers, but their parents weren't exactly letting them roam in the same way Sazh wasn't letting Dajh roam.

"If you don't let him out," Hope tried to say in as placating a tone as he could manage, "Then he might just run out."

Like in this situation.

Sazh was quiet. "...Sounds like you're speaking from experience, kid."

"I'm actually speaking about now." It didn't matter what experiences Hope had with things like that — the situations were different. "You can come get him now, but... it won't stop him from running off again. The next time to somewhere you won't know about. He's a good kid — he came here instead of anywhere else so you wouldn't be too worried, I think."

"What if some weird hijinks happen to him again? It always is, you know. Not that I'm saying he's to blame or anything — but fal'Cie, time travel... man, it's too much at times. I just want to keep my boy safe."

"Sazh." Hope said. "You know I'd do everything possible to keep him safe, right?"

"Yeah... And I'm keeping you to that, Hope." The was a rustling over the phone. "Let me talk to my boy about a few things then, will you? And make sure to call me every day! _Everyday_."

Hope didn't answer, knowing that Sazh would already know of his agreement, and stepped over to the couches where Dajh was still hiding in the cushions.

"Sounds like you're going to be okay." He said, amused. "But your father may want to lay down a few rules."

"You'd think I was eight and at a sleepover." Dajh complained, but accepted the phone sullenly.

Hope managed to excuse himself to the kitchen to prepare... tea? He wasn't sure. He didn't know if Dajh still wanted cookies all the time, either. He leaned forward against the counter and sighed.

So much for the normal day.

.

* * *

.

"He _says_," Dajh was complaining as he helped out with drying the dishes (Hope had opted for the manual method after Noel had managed to flood the entire kitchen when he tried his hand at the dishwasher), "That I get a month and if I'm not back by that deadline, I'd be _grounded_! Yeah, like that's not normal for me anyway. You know, like I get to go out regularly or whenever I want, and it's somehow a privilege that he's revoking. I don't get to go out at all! First it was okay because there was school, but then everyone started moving away and I'm done with high school now so what am I supposed to do? University's great, but what's the point if I can do it later and it's not as if I'd be 'missing years', anyway? It doesn't matter if I go now or if I go a hundred years from now, I'd still be 'six' in everyone's eyes."

The little boy paused, and Hope wondered for a moment if he actually did need air to breathe, but that thought was dispelled as Dajh continued, "Well, so long as they don't get rid of the universities. I don't think they will, though, since people of all ages go there, don't they? It just might be weird seeing little kids go. Hey, Hope, if they do manage to get rid of the schools later on, will you teach me things if I want to know something? Or, you know, specialize in something? I think dad wanted me to be a pilot like him at first, but I'm having a bit of trouble with that since I can't exactly reach everything properly and see over the dashboard at the same time. So now he won't even let me _try_ to fly anything. My options are getting really limited here."

Noel shot Hope a bewildered and somewhat panicked look from where he was putting the dishes away after Dajh dried them, and Hope just shook his head.

He had almost forgotten in the past years that kids tended to talk a lot.

"Wow," Noel spoke up after they finished with the chore and Dajh went to play with the three Cait Sith in the living room, the creatures sniffing curiously at his legs and getting underfoot with each step. The hunter was leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed as Hope went about making himself another pot of coffee (because he felt he deserved it after this day and because he was still going to stay up much later working on a few programs). "_Wow._ Do they—?"

"Not always." Hope responded, already knowing what Noel was asking about. "There are a lot of quiet kids. I suspect Dajh hasn't gotten many opportunities to speak with anyone outside of his father for a while."

And then there were the kids much louder than Dajh, but Noel didn't have to know about that.

"Did you talk that much at his age?" Noel asked instead, sounding amused.

"Did _you_?" Hope shot back, but then relented. "I didn't usually have much to say."

"I talked just the right amount! And I'm not sure whether I should believe you or not." Noel tilted his head back, and rolled his neck to dispel the kinks, sighing in satisfaction and uncrossing his arms to brace himself against the counter. "I have a hard time imagining you as a kid, though! You're always so..." He made a thinking face. "_Director Estheim_."

"I wasn't exactly leading the Academy as a child," Hope responded dryly, glancing over at Noel. "The Academy didn't exist then."

"Enlighten me, then! What was Hope Estheim like as a kid, huh?"

Quiet. Shy. Trusting. So very dependant on his parents and so naive about the world. He remembered building models and nodding along to what his friends said, always stuck in the middle between Kai and Elida's arguments. Listening to them boast about what they were going to be when they grew up and wondering why he didn't know what _he _wanted to do. He remembered trusting in everything his dad said, and doing homework in the kitchen so he could hear his mom hum as she prepared meals.

He had never once thought that his life would be... this.

Hope turned on the coffee machine, listening for the faint hum as it started to boil the water. "I was younger. Why?"

"Younger, but just as scary, huh? I see..."

Hope blinked in confusion, and turned toward Noel's mockingly contemplative pose. "Scary?"

"Yeah. You're a scary person, Hope. As scary as Serah."

"I didn't know Serah was scary." It was news to him. The younger Farron had always seemed the sweetest person to him, from the stories that Snow and Lightning had woven about her. Hope hadn't actually known her very well outside of that, though... she was Light's younger sister and entire world, and that had been enough for Hope until Lightning disappeared.

And then... he wasn't sure. Had it been guilt? Guilt that he hadn't managed to bring Lightning back to Serah, because once upon a time under a setting sun and the ruins of a Ushumgal Subjugator, he had promised that he'd look out for her as well.

Promises, his father had told him while he was very young, are _important_. Because there was always someone hurt with a broken promise.

Hope hadn't been able to keep that promise, and he couldn't bear watching Serah cry when he gave her knife back.

"According to the kids she teaches, she's very scary." Noel said with a smile. "I saw it myself, too. Once, in the Sunleth Waterscape. We were... well, we were hunting down these young flan that kept making trouble. Got to a group of them." And he gestured with his arms to indicate just how large of a group. "Dozens! And Serah — I was tired of hunting them, but Serah started yelling at them. Told them off about how they should be ashamed of themselves... I could barely believe it. From the looks of it, neither could they."

Hope smiled as well. He could see Serah doing that, actually.

"They just — froze in place. They looked terrified! Eventually they told Mog that they would do whatever Serah said so long as she doesn't yell at them anymore."

Hope laughed. "Sounds scary, all right."

"And I have this really bad feeling," Noel grumbled. "That you're just like that. And — you've got this _glare_. When you're tired, or you don't get your coffee on time. I can see why everyone at the Academy gives it a hundred percent, if they don't want to see you mad."

Okay, so he _had_ been told about the glare thing by nervous assistants...

"I suppose that might be... off-putting." But he wasn't _scary_... was he? He figured it was just something that happened to everyone. But then again... "Don't you get irritated at times?"

"Me? Yeah. I get angry at a lot of things. People, objects, situations..." He gestured with a thumb. "Those three out there. Yuel used to throw tantrums when she was little. We were the ones who got mad all the time, but then got over it really quickly, yeah? Then there's Serah, and you," and Hope could hear the unnamed _and Caius _in the pause, "and you guys never get angry. You guys are always calm, and reasonable, and... well, she's pretty scary when she _does_ get angry."

"So," Hope surmised. "You're saying I'm scary because I don't get angry, and because you think Serah is scary when she's angry... I must be?"

It was skewed logic, at the very best.

"You," Noel jabbed a finger in his direction. "Do get angry. And that's when you get scary. It's worse because you almost never get angry, and it must build up or something. I mean, twelve years and I've seen you angry _once_."

"Now I'm scary because I'm not often angry?" If anything, Hope felt even more confused.

"Yes. Exactly." Noel nodded with satisfaction.

Hope just shook his head, unsure how he was supposed to take that. "I think that's actually the first time someone said that to me."

"And you should take that as a compliment! Being scary means people don't mess with you."

"Yes," Hope agreed, surprisingly blithe as he remembered just how reluctant people had been to speak with him After Fall, and how that had continued. "I suppose it does."

He decided after that to wait in another room for the coffee to finish instead, since it would take a few minutes anyway and he better check on Dajh just to make sure the young boy hadn't been overwhelmed by the curious Cait Sith. It's fairly easy to ignore Noel calling out after him, especially since he has a goal in mind.

Dajh didn't seem to be having any troubles with the Cait Sith kits, though, the three curious animals winding around his arms and face curiously as the little boy lie on the floor with his chin cupped in his hands, kicking his legs in the air. The boy's attention lights upon seeing Hope, and he smiles.

"What're their names?" Dajh asked, reaching out with a hand to poke at the nearest Cait Sith, who had been leaning in to sniff his fingers but then backed away indignantly with the poke.

"Well," Hope sat down on the floor next to the child, and gestured to the kit climbing up Dajh's head already to paw at his hair. "That one's Noel."

Dajh laughed at the tickling sensation of paws over his ears, and ducked his head to allow the kit on easier. "But Noel already lives here! Doesn't that get confusing? Naming a pet after someone who already lives with you?"

"Oh, trust me," Hope intoned dryly. "He's very aptly named. Maybe one day you'll actually get human-Noel to tell you about the time he managed to cause an avalanche, flood, and fire all at the same time... and then that one," he emphasized by poking at the kit, who meowed innocently back at him, "tried to imitate him."

Which was, incidentally, the only time in the past years Hope had remembered getting truly angry over the amount of destruction that incurred and just how many things he had to replace and rebuild.

The little boy snickered, and then nodded. "Right. I'll have to ask him about that. What about these two?"

"That one's Serah," Hope pointed. "And that one's Yuel."

Dajh squinted at the kits batting at each other in front of his face. "...They don't look like girl kittens."

"They're not." Hope let out an amused huff. "But you can take that up with Noel."

"This Noel?" Dajh asked with a grin, pointing up to his head.

"Yes, of course it's that Noel." Hope shook his head.

"Hey, it could happen." The little boy defended. "Because then this Noel and this Serah would still be friends, right? And, uh... isn't 'Yuel' the name of the Seeress of Paddra? The one with the Oracle Drive that you discovered?"

Hope blinked. "Yes."

He hadn't known just how much the little boy knew about the incidents that had led up to the unleashing of chaos. The general populace knew quite a bit, but not the full story... nothing like the full story, really. Caius was just a name to them — nothing more. Yuel wasn't mentioned, and even Serah and Noel's information was kept on the down-low, with the exception to it being that Hope had ensured it would be recorded that they were the ones who saved the future.

"I guess that's cool. This way they're friends with the Seeress, too. Huh. Wonder why her, though. But then, maybe she's lonely, too." Dajh looked up, and for a while Hope wondered just how it was that the boy had been alive for eighteen chronological years. He looked so young, and he acted so young as well. "How come you're not one of the ones named, though, Hope? Oh! And if you get more of them, can I get one named after me, too?"

Hope didn't think he wanted any more 'pets', to be honest. But that didn't feel like the right thing to say to Dajh.

"You want to be named as well?"

"Well... yeah! And dad, and Snow and Miss Lightning and Miss Vanille and Miss Fang, right? Then they'd all be one big family."

Hope felt speechless.

"I," Noel's voice interrupted them from above, and Hope turned to blink up at the hunter who was still on his feet but leaning down to speak with his hands on his hips. "Don't think you want to see what _that_ family would be able to do, kid."

"Why not?" Dajh asked, still enchanted with the idea (and really, Hope was just a little bit enchanted as well even if he was smart enough to reject the very notion of it) and stroking the smallest of the Cait Sith (Yuel) gently on the head as the kit rubbed against his hand.

"Because then you can try giving them their baths and see just how much trouble they give you when they're named after some of the best warriors history has seen." Noel responded easily with a quirk of his lips. "_And_ when none of them like water."

The young boy cringed back slightly at the mental image. "...Good point."

But that hadn't been the point of Dajh's words, and Hope knew it. The little boy still believed in things that would be alright, even if he understood that maybe those people would never come back. It all seemed so naive.

"Hey, Hope," Dajh said, interrupting his thoughts as Noel made to sit down on the carpeted floor as well (what was the point of having couches when no one used them?), "Dad said that... Well, he said that you did this before, too. So... I can't be in too much trouble, right?"

"Did what?"

"This running away thing." Dajh responded dimly, and Hope drew in a sharp breath even as Noel looked over curiously. "He said that he should have expected me to do it when even you did, too."

Suddenly, all Hope could think about was just how he could tell Sazh off the next time the two of them spoke, but... That was unfair. The man didn't know anything about it, shouldn't know anything about it when he had already been gone by then. Had he really deduced that much from their earlier, short conversation? He couldn't have meant any other time, either, since Hope hadn't exactly run away under his watch as a l'Cie. The whole journey in the beginning had been him running away, but Hope had never told Sazh about that.

"I think," Hope said carefully, bypassing the original question entirely to answer what it was that Dajh really wanted to know. "He'll be glad enough when you get home that he won't have any room to be mad."

That had been how it went with Bartholomew Estheim.

His dodge was ignored by Dajh's wide eyes as he sat up a little straighter with a Cait Sith on his head in rapt attention and demanded, "You ran away?"

Maybe it was a common trait of the Katzroy family to turn unanswered questions into acknowledgement that they were right. Or maybe they were just really good at getting the right answers out of people. Hope shifted his position uncomfortably.

"Was it because your dad was being overbearing, too?" And Dajh seemed fascinated by the idea. "Never letting you out or doing your own thing—"

"I didn't run away." Hope denied before Dajh's imagination could get too elaborate. "Although I may have... unintentionally disappeared for a few days before."

Dajh and Noel shared a conspiratorial look, sensing a weakness.

"Sooo you're saying that you might have went off on your own without, you know, informing anyone about it for a few days." Dajh nodded sagely. "I get it. That's what I just did."

Noel laughed at that, low and hearty as he reached over to ruffle Dajh's hair, ignoring the shrieking protests of his namesake who hissed to defend his newfound territory. "I'm sure Hope was a lot taller when he did that, kid."

"It's not about how tall I am!" Dajh protested. "I'm almost eighteen! It's not like — I've never really gotten into trouble, you know? Dad says it differently, but I never hung out with the wrong crowd or really ran off on my own or went along with peer pressure or anything like that. No drugs, no bad habits, and I've always done as he says... what's wrong with wanting a bit of freedom? It's not that bad, is it? There are kids so much worse out there, so how come I'm so bad just because I want some space?"

"You're not bad." Hope reassured, sure now that Dajh wasn't so much talking about him running away as the circumstances that lead up to it. "Parents are... protective. They have a right to be, and they _should_ be. And sometimes... you don't want them to compare you to kids who always do better, right? If they don't do that, then they can't compare you to the kids who do worse, too. So if you think that it's unfair, then think of it the way other way — he might be happy you're not one of those kids always getting into trouble, but in order to compare you to everyone else, he'd have to compare you to the kids who... who always succeed somehow. And then you might feel just as bad."

Dajh rested his chin on a hand. "...You always succeeded, didn't you?"

Again, the conversation seemed to go back to him. Hope sighed, folding his hands in his lap as one of the Cait Sith kitlings (Serah, he noted absently) made his way onto Hope's legs.

"I thought you were going to talk about why you came here." Hope deflected once again, feeling tired.

"I just want to know." The little boy turned his eyes downward. "...I guess I want to feel like I didn't completely screw things up."

Noel stayed quiet, and shook his head when Hope looked over at him for help.

Hope wasn't sure what he was supposed to do say in this situation. It was easier when he had a goal, a thesis, and a process. Organizing thoughts in compartments to clarify points. But it had been a while since he interacted with children, even if Dajh would insist that he wasn't a child.

Children, to Hope, were those who still thought everything would be happily ever after, and those without the experience to know better. It was easy to see just how sheltered Dajh had been by Sazh, and Hope wasn't sure... how to confront that.

"I suppose you're correct from a view," Hope admitted after a long moment of silence between the three of them. "About... freedom."

Even if it had been different with him. Hope hadn't minded when his father first started taking over to keep him safe. He had _understood_. With what happened on Cocoon, and being broadcasted as one of the l'Cie... with a third of the world dead, it meant that everyone had people they loved taken from them. And there were plenty of people who were more focused on that than the fact that they were still alive. He knew from experience that it was easiest to turn to rage when grieving, because anything was better than the hollowness left by a death.

Protests, riots, and even quiet, but enraged, ostracism when he walked down the streets meant that Hope had learned early and the hard way that Bartholomew Estheim's overprotectiveness was warranted. No matter how frustrated he had been, he hadn't deviated from his father's rules. Comparing what happened with him and how Dajh had escaped from under his father's protective scrutiny didn't seem... right.

But the young boy had never lived through that stigma, and by now all the stories of the time after the fall of Cocoon had faded to nothing but fairy tale. Words on a page of history. Words that didn't match Hope's memories of those first few years, being the only recognizable ex-l'Cie.

He had originally thought Lightning to be encased in crystal along with Fang and Vanille, and then soon after Sazh and Dajh had disappeared as well...

And then.

"I was seventeen as well." Hope admitted. "But I didn't... run away." More like, he had snuck off. "When I was fifteen, Snow had been... investigating the early forms of paradoxes. We hadn't really known what they were at first but he had been working with the military on what seemed like strange storms right outside of sites we had started to colonize down on Gran Pulse. By then, he had promised Serah that he would do whatever it took to bring Lightning back and..."

He remembered listening over the comms, holding his breath even as he hid the device he had rigged up from his father, huddling in a corner of his room with the lights off and wondering just what it was like out in the field.

There had been shouts and warnings from various people, but Snow had laughed it off.

"...then he just disappeared. You and your dad were gone, too. And then in 3AF... well. Serah was gone."

And that had been everyone. _Everyone._ At seventeen, Hope had been an awkward and lanky teenager in the middle of growth spurts and prone to staying inside and helping his father with documents that were needed to establish the Academy. He had been studying from home and submitting reports and tests and exchanging emails with various professionals in different fields, sometimes using a pseudonym in order to get help from them.

At seventeen, Hope had been the only one left who had been involved with the incident. Of all the former l'Cie.

"...I went to look for everyone."

Because he had overheard his father's grim conversation with Rydgea, preparing for the worst. Always preparing for the worst.

Hope had decided then that he couldn't just sit back and _wait_ for things to be okay again; that he couldn't just sit back and be so coddled by his father, smothered to the point where taking a walk outside was still dangerous. Three years of bottling up everything 'for his own good' had only built up his feelings of bitterness. No matter the miracle that had happened and woke them from being Cie'th... from crystal sleep, even, what was the point?

He could understand why Fang and Vanille and Lightning had been important. And even the others. But him... why wake him up? What had been the point of saving his life if that was all it amounted to: being the focus of hatred for every survivor? And more important than that was what had happened to everyone else.

"I packed a bag. Left a note for my father." He hadn't taken a phone because it was so easily traceable. He knew that Bartholomew wouldn't let him go for long. He'd pull every favor with every high government official to ensure Hope's safe return. "And I left at night."

Thinking about it now, it seemed like such a petty thing to do. Hope had still been somewhat of a child then.

Dajh's eyes were wide, hands still despite the Cait Sith striving for his attention.

"You never said anything about that."

Hope turned his head. Noel's expression was strangely intense, and the scientist couldn't make out why.

"It wasn't relevant." Hope said simply.

"Did your dad find you?" Dajh asked, hushed. "You said you were gone for a few days."

In a sense, he had. Without his magic, Hope had been extremely vulnerable in the wilds of Gran Pulse, even when he knew the layout and landscape, and could make his way around without getting into too much trouble. Humans had once again began to tame the landscape and create routes in which monsters would stay well away from, but Hope hadn't wanted to be discovered by people. At that point, he had been more afraid of the random stranger than he had been of Behemoths. Strangers were cruel and at best would report him back to his father.

Two days, half a dozen battles, and a dislocated shoulder later, Hope had arrived in the Paddra ruins with a ruined set of clothes and a pouch empty of potions and painkillers. Unlike Dajh, Hope hadn't known who he could go to then. A brief visit to New Bodhum and hushed conversation with Maqui had confirmed that Serah had left to find Lightning, but the NORA member refused to help any further, convinced that Hope should stay with his father rather than go on this obsessive journey.

He had been to the Paddra ruins before, but that first time he had been searching for signs of life. The second time, he was just looking for anything that could help him formulate a clue as to where everyone had disappeared to. He just — didn't know. And there was something terrifying in that ignorance.

It was there, huddled in a small underground shelter to protect himself from the wind shear, that he had found the Oracle Drive.

"I made a mistake." Hope admitted, attempting a nonchalance that he didn't feel. It had been so long ago, and yet... "I managed to activate something, a beacon of sorts, that could be seen for miles away."

The Oracle Drive had responded to his pain and fear; his need to _know_. He had slumped over the console, smearing blood over it from a previous wound that had seeped through his clothes, trying his hardest to justify his actions and his reasoning and...

The night sky lit up.

"All that distance I went, and the military managed to get there in hours." It felt embarrassing to say. "I didn't manage to get... far."

"Did you try again?" Dajh asked.

Hope shook his head.

The first scene that had appeared from the Oracle Drive had been breathtaking. Beasts and warriors from Pulse meeting against machines in the sky. It was a disjointed vision of fire and action, of blood and screams. Then the scene had changed and Cocoon was crashing to the ground, a vision he hadn't been able to see in its entirely when it actually happened due to crystallization.

The third scene, mere seconds long, was Lightning — clad in armor and fighting in such a strange landscape he had never seen.

Hope had thought in that breathless moment that perhaps the machine was recording what had happened. He hadn't imagined it was a device to tell the future, but rather an old Pulsian record, there to save important events as they happened. He had thought, at that moment, that perhaps he would be able to find the others because they were _still there_. Just somewhere he had never seen before, but not out of reach from the strange device.

He had spent the next several hours attempting to learn how to operate the machine, too excited to have discovered a clue that he hadn't even fathomed just how far the lights from the machine would reach. He had still been on it when the airships had landed, and had argued with his father about staying since Bartholomew Estheim had personally come down to find his errant son.

It was only then that his father had slapped him hard across the face in front of a platoon of uneasy soldiers, demanding to know just what he had been thinking. The man had dismissed the soldiers curtly after that, sounding more like a battle hardened general than he did a tired but upcoming politician.

There had been pent up accusations on Hope's part after that and a lot of yelling, because _three years_ he had stayed silent and obedient and unnoticed. He had screamed and gestured wildly and spat out every single fault he had noticed from his father the past several years, not to mention all of Bartholomew's shortcomings while Hope had been growing up.

The number one thing, Hope had spat bitterly, was just how his own father couldn't seem to _look_ at him anymore; like he was some kind of criminal, like the reason Bartholomew had coveted Hope so much being that it was some twisted sense of _obligation_. Hope couldn't _stand_ it. Just how had Bartholomew managed in the past few years, to know that his son, who _looked so much like her_, had been the cause of his wife's death?

And why, Hope had demanded to know, hadn't he been taken away just like the others? Why had he been the only one to be left behind?

His father had looked so worn and tired;. The man had taken off his glasses slowly to clean them, looking down and asking gravely _is that what you think?_

"Well, that's boring." Dajh sulked. "I thought you went on this great adventure."

"What I did," Hope countered, "Was worry my father. Dajh. The reason your dad wants you safe is because he loves you. He wants you safe, and running away isn't going to prove your point. It only proves that he's going to have to protect you from yourself as well as the rest of the world."

He had never seen his father look as defeated as that one moment, standing in the Paddra ruins with his heart in his throat. Not even when he had revealed his mother's death to him, and that it was Hope the military had been trying to hunt down; that he was now the nightmare that kids woke up screaming from, the hushed stories of monsters in the night.

Hope had stood there, deathly pale and gangly with wide eyes as he realized just what he had revealed to his father. Because while thoughts like that were poisonous, he had never meant for them to take shape outside of his head.

Rather than striking him again, Bartholomew Estheim had stepped forward and enveloped his son in a tight embrace. At seventeen, Hope had only been several inches shorter than his father, just tall enough to rest his chin on his father's shoulder.

Then his father, the man who had managed to shape the laws of this new world around them, to stomp on protesters and fanatics alike and still have the strength to guide their fledgling government... apologized. Over and over again until the man was breathless, and Hope had for a brief moment been so _angry_ because once again he thought his father hadn't been seeing him for him. He had been so sure that the apologizes had been because his father thought he had failed _Nora_.

_But_, his father had said against Hope's ear once his voice was hoarse and cracked, _I will do anything to keep you here. If my prayers and bargains with gods have kept you safe, then I will gladly take the blame._

"You can say that," Dajh frowned. "But it doesn't help. There's no way to prove that I'd be okay without him smothering me, than going out and proving that yeah, I _am_ going to be okay."

At that, Hope looked to Noel, who nodded.

"Well," Noel spoke up, slapping one hand against his knee to grab Dajh's attention (and in the process manage to grab the attention of all the Cait Sith as well). "That's what we're here for. If you're going to stay here for a month, we're going to make the very most out of it."

"Wha...? What do you mean?"

"It means," Hope said with a wry smile, hands still clasped in his lap. "That you're going to have to learn how to wake up very early."

"We've got a month to teach you how to fight and defend yourself." Noel agreed. "Doesn't mean your dad's ever going to stop worrying about you, but he might let you out a bit more if you can take on a few things by yourself.

"So come on," Noel got up. "You should get to bed now. Unless you've got a better idea about how to spend the month."

"No way!" Dajh scrambled up to his feet quickly, the Cait Sith in his hair falling with an indignant squeak. He looked excited and maybe a little disbelieving. "I definitely want to learn how to fight!"

"Go on, then." Noel jerked his head toward the bathroom. "There are extra toothbrushes under the sink, and I'll show you your room after you're done getting ready for bed."

The young boy all but ran toward the bathroom, and Noel sighed dramatically once the door slammed shut after him.

"Kids," He huffed, and Hope laughed under his breath. It was only moments later that Noel's expression turned serious as he looked down at where Hope was sitting with the remaining kits.

"Hey, Hope... I..." He hesitated as the scientist turned his attention to him with a curious sound. The hunter looked uncertain for a moment, but then seemed to firm his resolve. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" The three Cait Sith were now tussling near his legs, realizing that the humans weren't going to be paying more attention to them.

Noel's gaze was intensely blue, and Hope wondered for a moment if he had missed something very important.

"...For taking Serah away." The hunter finally admitted. "That was what finally left you all alone... wasn't it?"

Hope smiled. It figured that Noel would be worried about that.

"I wasn't alone. I had my father with me the entire time, and... maybe I needed to run out that time. Just like how you and Serah were needed to save the future. I found the Oracle Drive before my father found me, you know. Maybe everything was all leading up to something big, and it still is."

Although, a thought whispered in his head, maybe Noel had been right about him being scary. He had a track record of bottling up all his hurts and grievances, and then exploding at the very worst moment. It was a habit he had tried to rid himself of, but he wasn't sure just how successful he was.

"You think Dajh being here's the same thing? Something that needs to happen?"

"Who knows?" But that might not be the best answer, and Hope attempted a reassuring look. "I'm sure it is, though."

"I'm finished!" The bathroom door slammed open again at Dajh's excited shout, and Noel spared Hope a brief smile before he stomped down the hallway.

"That was way too fast!" The brunet declared, "What do you take me for? Brush properly, Dajh!"

"I _brushed_! Want me to breathe on you?"

"Think you can gargle toothpaste and then be done? Get back in there!"

Hope looked away as Dajh yelped when Noel gathered the little boy up under one arm to carry him back and ensure that he _brush properly this time, kid!_

At his feet, the three Cait Sith were hissing and mewing at each other, running about the room and tackling each other as siblings did, heavy _thunks_ settling as they ran into tables and couches, nothing deterring them for more than a few seconds at best.

After Nora had died, Hope had found himself growing up in a silent household, half because his father had been gone most of the time despite doing his best to make time for his son, and half because both Hope and Bartholomew were quiet people in general. He had grown accustomed to the silence between heartbeats and strikes of the clock.

There was a loud yowl as one of the Cait Sith attempted to jump onto the back of the couch and failed, much to the delight of his siblings who pounced immediately.

This house, Hope thought vaguely, was noisy.

He found himself surprisingly alright with that.

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**A/N: **Oops, missed my normal Thursday deadline by an hour. ^^;; Luckily I had this sitting in the document manager already for the past few days (which I should have used to edit, I know, I know...), so I'm sneaking on the middle of the night to upload this. XD; Well, not sneaking on since I'm already on Google Docs trying to catch up with my writing. ^^; The next few updates will be those third parts of Life Continues and Reunion that I kept putting off. After I finish the one I'm supposed to be working on now, I'll only have one more prompt left. Anyone have any requests? ^_^


	10. eight months (cont)

**Life Continues**

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It became obvious that something was wrong not three days in, although Hope had found out long before that thanks to numerous reports that had been filed about what people had gathered regarding the recent months enveloped in chaos.

"How long are they going to stay like this?" Noel finally asked three days later, sounding disgruntled (if not the slightest bit disturbed) as he watched the still blind baby Cait Sith wiggle around within the warm blankets that had been prepared for them. The four had been relocated to the cleanest room in the house, and while both Hope and Noel continued working to restore the rest of the place, they dropped in every few minutes to check up on the kits.

"Months," Hope had answered, tired as he rested his head on his arms in a rare unguarded moment. The past days had taken its toll on him. He was used to getting little sleep, but unused to waking up numerous times through what little rest he got in order to ensure that the kits were fed. He'd have to come up with some sort of contraption to feed them whenever they got hungry, at this rate... "The growth of animals have been slowed to nearly one tenth of what was considered normal. That's why so few people have noticed it — most wouldn't notice animals having aged less than a month in all this time. It also means that the ones we've got now are going to be dependant for a very long time."

It seemed that for the animals, at least, time still flowed. Just as it did for plants and metal erosion. Further clarifications had revealed that plants grew even faster than was normal, perhaps to substitute for the slowed growth of fauna. Nourishment had to be provided for somehow.

Even if Hope had noted that his wasn't the only appetite to have diminished greatly in the past several months. What he typically consumed for a single meal was more than enough to tide his hunger for an entire day, which was a relief as it freed up some time when he and Noel took turns cooking day by day.

The kits, however, continued to need food every several hours, even it was barely a few drops of protein enriched milk for each of them. It meant that Hope's few hours of sleep had been frequently interrupted by the feeding schedule. It helped that Noel was willing to take over half the time, but the thought of having to do this for _months_ before the newborns were able to go on a more regularly scheduled mealtime was... daunting.

"At least they're quiet right now," Noel murmured from where he was sitting, and Hope couldn't bother to muster up a response, head in his arms and trying to catch just a few winks before the cries for food would start up again. He should really come up with a device that would feed the kits regularly, but... it hadn't felt right the first time he thought about it. Using machines?

Three days later and he was starting to dream up the designs. He wasn't sure he could do the constant feedings for months on end.

The next thing he knew, Noel was shaking his shoulder gently, "Hey. I got the others, but you might want to take care of the little one."

Hope raised his head from his arms blearily, uncertain of what was going on for a moment and wincing as his back protested how long he had stayed bent over in that position against the table, too sound asleep to realize just how uncomfortable that should be.

The little one...? Oh, right. There had been the one kit much smaller than her siblings who had been the one to sightlessly follow Hope around with her head and trembling limbs, usually crying the longest and refusing to eat unless Hope sat down to feed her. She had been the main reason Hope hadn't been able to get as much sleep the past three days, seeing as Noel would have to wake him in order to feed the littlest of the Cait Sith. It had because of her that the two of them had found the litter in the first place, since she had been the one who refused to stop crying until they were picked up.

Vaguely, Hope wondered if she understood that their mother had died and was crying for her. It couldn't be true, but it was a thought he couldn't stop entertaining.

The the moment, the small Cait Sith was squirming in the blankets, restless while the rest of her siblings had settled back down into sleep.

Hope pressed a gloved hand against his eyes for a brief moment before stretching in an attempt to rid the kinks in his back. "—All right. I got it. You should get some sleep."

Noel didn't go. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. You've done most of the work the past two days. Get some rest."

Hope yawned behind a hand as the hunter finally relented and murmured a 'good night', his footsteps silent as he walked away. He didn't bother to look at the time; the lights in the room were dimmed for comfort and it was cool enough to tell that it was the middle of the night. He took just a moment to himself before reaching for the small and mostly empty bottle of milk that Noel had prepared previously, still warm as the glass eyedropper clinked inside the bottle.

"Hey," He prompted quietly as he filled the eyedropper with milk, smiling as the smallest kit raised her head in search for Hope's voice. "You know, you should just let Noel feed you if you're hungry."

The small kit sniffed curiously at his fingers instead of the eyedropper as he tried to prompt it to eat, and then prodded curiously at the end of the dropper, chirping as a drop fell on her nose. After that, though, her interest went back toward Hope's finger, causing the scientist to frown.

"You're not hungry?" He asked. It was an unusual thing, he knew. Weren't creatures that young supposed to be constantly hungry? It should have been several hours, especially if Noel had managed to feed the other ones... The kit didn't answer, but instead meandered away from her siblings to half climb atop Hope's hand, ignoring the eyedropper altogether as she continued to chirp at him slowly, sounding tired.

Hope frowned. That didn't seem right at all. He might still be groggy from sleep, but previous experiences with this kit had been... different. He stroked a finger gently down the chirping kit's head, watching carefully as the newborn quieted down at the touch, seemingly pacified. She turned her head away, however, when Hope tried to feed her again.

"You have to eat some time." Hope informed the kit, fully acknowledging that she wouldn't be able to understand him but not caring about that. "You never sleep until you do, and you need your sleep."

More than he needed his, actually. It was the case with all infants.

The tiny thing cried at him in response, and Hope sighed lightly. He let the eyedropper rest back in the bottle, resting his other arm back down on the table as he allowed the kit to grab weakly at his fingers.

"We should call you Rebel." He mused quietly, watching the newborn in amusement. "Since you never listen to Noel, and now you're not listening to me. Or Siren, since you never stop with those sounds. Have to wake me up like an alarm clock."

As if in agreement, the chirping noise grew louder against his fingers, pink nose twitching as it bumped into his glove.

Hope watched for a few minutes before he went back for the eyedropper, placing a drop of milk just on the tip of his glove for the Cait Sith to sniff at. He was disappointed as the newborn just sneezed against it and then climbed over the finger to wiggle her way into his palm.

"Hey," Hope admonished, although his words held no heat. "That's not where you sleep."

The Cait Sith (Rebel, or Siren, or whatever it might respond to), seemed to disagree entirely as she curled loosely in his hand, torso just the slightest bit bigger than the breadth of his palm. She chirped at him for a few more seconds before laying down her head, huffing heavily against the leather of the glove in a way that made Hope sit up straighter.

Was that normal? The other ones didn't seem to do that at all. If anything, it looked like she was having trouble _breathing_, the way she seemed to tremble against his hand.

With his free hand, Hope reached for a tablet that he had put down previously before going to sleep, noticing the flickering lights as it powered on in his peripheral vision. His gaze stayed on the kit as he pulled the tablet closer to him, his sinister hand already typing to look for problems that might arise in young Cait Sith.

What he found when he finally tore his gaze away was not promising.

From studies, there was the rare occasion for litters to have a much smaller member — a runt of the group, that would cry the loudest and seek the most attention, often expending much more energy than it's litter mates. Not much had been known about those kits as they usually died within hours of their birth and were quickly devoured by predators who could hear their loud cries from miles away. The runt, as it was usually referred, would hastily be abandoned by it's family as the mother carried the rest of the kits far away so that when the predators came, the rest of the litter would survive.

The few that had been found and rescued by humans in time would quickly die as well, proving that their lack of longevity wasn't due to the nature of the cries so much as a predisposition toward weaker organs and a lack of immune system. They did not inherit their mother's' immune system and would burn themselves out calling for help.

There was, as a collective consensus, nothing that could be done; especially considering that those kits lived for mere hours between birth and death. Just one of those flukes of nature. They would cry until they had trouble breathing, and then no matter what had been done to save them: increasing their air flow, trying to stabilize their system, or anything that many veterinarians could think of... it was no use. It would only be minutes after that till their death. The only good thing was that they didn't live long enough for anyone to get attached.

Certainly not for four days.

Suddenly it didn't seem like enough. All those mental complaints he had about not enough sleep and having to take care of them, especially this one; it didn't seem right. He didn't dread the upcoming months. He _wanted_ them to happen. Hope would rather be woken up at all hours in the middle of the night for months. Four days might have been much longer than what the reports said could happen, but it didn't seem like enough. Not in the least.

He _wanted_ to be woken up constantly in the middle of the night with never ending squeaks and chirps and cries for his attention, and he wanted to see the little creature's eyes open for the first time — she would never have even seen the world. Never see light.

Hours might translate to days and minutes to hours for animals now, but it still didn't give Hope enough _time_ to do anything. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_. He should have wondered why she was so small to begin with, instead of accepting her just as the little and loud one. Then he would have had — four days might not have been enough for him to come up with something, _anything_, but it _might have been_.

Right now, though, he could see as she struggled to breathe, tiny chest heaving as her paws ended up curling around one of his fingers, seeking warmth and — he didn't know.

Comfort?

He didn't have time to change things, which felt _bitter_ with how he had seen time since chaos came to dominate the world. Things were supposed to remain unchanging; unmoving. He wasn't supposed to fight for time again, not suppose to find it slipping away and lost to him when it had stopped in its tracks.

And now at such a pivotal time, his mind was blank. He should have a million ideas on how to save the little kit, a billion thoughts and theories to enact within the next few hours that might spark something and turn a sure death into _survival_.

He _should_ have. But watching the little one (Rebel? Siren?) fight for breath, Hope found that he couldn't deviate his attention from her.

In the morning when Noel came out again, he found Hope still awake and huddled at the table, gloves discarded to the side as pale hands cradled a silent and unmoving body.

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**A/N: **I seem to be posting out of order a lot! Both Life Continues and Reunion was finished quite a while ago, but I seem to have lost track of that with all the other snippets going up. ^^;; So... I mentioned in the first part that there were four kits rescued, but in every other thing that mentions them, there's only three. This is why?

_**AlphaGammaSigma**_, wow that was an amazing review! I love trying to slip into Hope's head the most, but I think that both Noel and Hope are characters who have much more they keep unsaid, so it gets a little hard when everything is written from Hope's point of view and what he notices - because he's not very good at noticing other people unless they're extremely blunt with him. My take is that he _is_ very emotionally closed off, with good reasons, but that also means that Noel's thoughts and reasonings would also be lost to him unless the other spoke out, which isn't too likely. I've got half the ficlet about the building blocks to Noel becoming the Shadow Hunter written, but it's actually much later in the timeline!


	11. two hundred twenty five years

**Step into the End 1/2  
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Hope had never liked trains.

All right, so that might have been an exaggeration, saying _never._ There might have been a time in his childhood when he didn't really have an opinion of them, or maybe even _liked_ them. But it wasn't a time he could remember, and the memories would have been written over by the negative feeling when he boarded the Purge train at fourteen.

After that, the idea of trains seem to have lost its appeal.

Still, he didn't allow his dislike of them to makes trips more complicated. They were the easiest method of quick transportation, and that meant boarding them on a semi-regular basis if he wanted to get places. It was the same for everyone.

That meant it was one of the easiest targets to the newly formed religious cults, those that 'served the God Bhunivelze' (and Hope had never regretted sharing the mythos to the general populace more), and the train was halfway across a desert before the first zealot entered the car with guns in the air, both arms up as if receiving a blessing even as the people in the car started screaming at the sight of the guns.

"Rejoice!" The voice was distorted, not only by the mask but a mechanical synthesizer, and difficult to hear over the panicked screams. "For today you have all been blessed!"

"Get down," Noel hissed right before he shoved Hope lower to the ground (since the scientist had, in contrary to everyone else's actions, sat straighter in order to see what was going on). Reluctantly accustomed to the manhandling by now, Hope paid the hunter little mind as his eyes followed the line of figures entering the train car, all dressed heavily in religious robes and carrying weapons.

He had heard about them — everyone had, but it was the first time Hope had seen them in person rather than descriptions through the holovids. News reports had claimed that all electronic devices were scrambled once the cult members were in range, and fingering the phone he had in his pocket, Hope didn't doubt that.

The screams grew louder as the lead zealot let loose a hail of bullets into the ceiling of the car, but the shrill sounds died down quickly the moment he stopped, leaving only soft whimpers and the muffled sounds of children crying.

"That's better," the zealot said, satisfaction laced through his words despite the vocal modifier. He lowered his guns, although it made little difference in the threat level seeing as as the others behind him had their weapons posed and ready to shoot. "Now I know everyone here is currently very scared. But we are only here to deliver a message, and I promise that by the end of it, you will come to understand what we are doing and start to see things our way."

A message? Hope sincerely doubted that, although he made no effort to raise and say that considering the warm hand on his back, making sure he stayed down.

"Brothers and sisters!" The zealot announced. "Today, we have all been blessed. For today, you will come to understand the cycle of our world, and just how desperately it needs to heal. You will learn what you must to in order to rid Nova Chrysalia of this _chaos_, and to return things to what it once was."

The man extended a hand toward a young child, who was quickly snatched into her frightened mother's arms. Undaunted, the man crouched down to their level to speak to them. "How cruel it must be… to be trapped in such a small form for such a long time. Hundreds of years, we have been here. Hundreds of years, we have suffered under stagnation and the heavy burden of knowing that any attempts we make to grow old and die are _futile_! We have watched our children rage and grieve for their lost futures; we have seen loved ones grow deranged.

"This chaos — this… unending blight of our agony, is something that cannot be seen. Can not be combated. It has been festering in our souls, resting within the depths of our ennui. And it has been growing. For hundreds of years, it has been feeding on our desolation, on fears and worries and regrets. You say to yourselves now that whatever you have yet to do — what ever it is you wanted to do… _you will have time to complete it later._

"And tell me: is this not why 'later' never comes? Those loved ones you would talk to 'later', that time you meant to spend with those closest to you; it all comes 'later'. It comes to a point where there is no _future_." He spat the word out, like it was disgusting to him, and stood back up to tower over the mass of people huddled down low, listening raptly to his words on the edge of fear and awe.

"There comes a point." His tone softened, the disjointed artificial modulation sounding almost sweet as he paused in his speech to glance around the train car at each and every person, hands now by his sides and without the weapons. Hope hadn't noticed him putting them away or anyone taking them from him. "There comes a point where you must have wondered why we are alive. Why do we still exist — why are we so unchanged no matter what we do, and why do we continue on doing the same things over and over again? There must be a _point_ to this! A method to the madness. Why do we suffer day by day, watching as the sun comes up and waiting until it sets, to do over again?" He raised a hand to his heart, voice thunderous at the last question as if demanding an answer from a higher deity.

His mask turned downward to look at the frightened child, timbre softening. "Do you not want to grow up? To thrive in a world that changes?" He reached out a hand to her again. "To live and love as you must have read in storybooks?"

The car was deathly silent.

"If this is the case," the man concluded. "Then I implore you… listen to me."

For a moment, it seemed as if the man's words had impacted everyone in the train car. For a moment, there was nothing but silence and the whistling of air as the train continued on toward its destination.

"…You're crazy." The child finally spoke up, sounding terrified as she shrank into her mother's grasp and away from the masked man. "You're the crazy people from the news. You can't help me grow up. You _kill_ people."

Once again, the zealot was undaunted. "A temporary death. You might even say a reprieve to take us back to where we came. For this world to be cured, it must be reborn. For it to be reborn, we must be reborn. As it is right now… it is currently not possible."

"You mean for us to _die_!" A hysterical voice called out from the back of the train car, prompting others to cry out in distress and agreement.

The masked figure waited several moments to let the hysteria rise again, before lifting a single hand and those that stood behind him raised their weapons.

"I assure you this is not so." He said smoothly. "I mean for you to listen to me and then make your own choice. We are here as messengers, and nothing more."

"Messengers preaching at gunpoint," Hope claimed under his breath, quietly enough that only Noel snorted in agreement. "That's an intense religion."

"Cake or death?" Noel joked, and Hope couldn't help the chuckle.

"Ten gil says that cake is poisoned anyway."

"Yeah?" Noel breathed out amidst the protests of people, and Hope wondered not for the first time just how his life had turned to the point where he was the type to make jokes in such a dangerous situation. "What if it turns out to be pie instead of cake?"

Hope blinked in confusion before he shifted to look up at Noel. "…What does that even _mean_?"

"What, I mean what if it's not cake they're offering—"

"You two."

They both froze as they realized that they must have been caught conversing, turning their gaze in unison to the masked man before them — not the man who had been speaking, but one of the many pointing a weapon at people in the train car, now scattered through the area to keep everyone in check. He didn't have a voice synthesizer like the previous speaker did, but instead sounded only muffled from the mask.

"The Voice would like to speak to you two."

The robed man gestured with his gun, and Hope could feel Noel tense up, unamused with being threatened as such. He took a moment to grab at the brunet's wrist tightly and ensure that there wouldn't be a fight where stray bullets could injured anyone. He had no doubt that the hunter could take the crew of masked men on easily, but accidents could always happen, and Hope wasn't going to allow anyone in the train car to come to harm if he could help it.

This was a good thing. It was better if they took the fight to who was responsible for this, anyway.

Slowly, Hope let go and raised his hands, certain he must have conveyed the message through that simple act alone. Over two hundred years of sticking close to each other meant that Hope was confident he knew how his friend was going to react in this situation.

"All right," Hope said slowly, evenly, as he spread his hands to show he wasn't a threat. He stood up slowly, hearing Noel do so as well, even if the hunter didn't raise his hands in surrender. He was probably too busy glaring at the ones with guns. "The Voice — was he the one speaking earlier?"

It was a safe assumption and a foregone conclusion on Hope's part already, but he wanted to test whether their hijackers were willing to reveal any information.

Instead, the mysterious man remained silent and stepped back to allow them out of the narrow row, his silence more telling than any response would have been.

Both Hope and Noel exchanged a look before stepping out, allowing the armed man to maneuver them into the front corner of the train where the original speaker was seated on the floor, looking calm and serene in the middle of the chaos.

"Ahh, thank you, brother." The speaker (Voice?) said as the three of them approached, looking up. "I see you've found our guests with no trouble."

"What do you what?" Noel spoke up abruptly. "Those people listened to you, so maybe you should get your guns out of their faces. That's what you wanted them to do, right? Listen?"

The speaker stood up slowly, one hand pushing against his knee as he rose, before gesturing to the car door. "Let's speak elsewhere, shall we? Then I may explain things clearer."

"Elsewhere." Hope echoed softly, and tilted his head. He had handled far too many terrorists and protesters throughout the years to feel threatened in this situation. "With more of your… brothers?"

"With none." The speaker said, much to Hope's surprise. "Let us say… the two of you are hard to forget, even after all these years."

That certain drew Hope's attention, and his eyes narrowed. They had been lucky before, with the new world around them, most of what happened prior to chaos was nothing but history, and while many did a double take at him, not but a handful could immediately tell who he was. And to know Noel as well…

It was troubling.

He followed the speaker into the next train car, the doors shutting smoothly behind him and Noel as he took in just how empty it was there. No robed men, no passengers… it was suspicious. More than suspicious, even. The speaker, however, didn't look at all discomforted, picking a row to sit in before he beckoned them over. Hope looked over to Noel to see the hunter's narrowed blue eyes seeking out all the exits already, probably calculating the many ways of not only taking out the robed zealots, but managing to do so without harming any of the passengers that got in the way. From the way things looked, it didn't look like theirs was the only car that had been hijacked.

"Director Estheim." The man finally spoke after several moments as both Hope and Noel chose to remain standing rather than sit where he had beckoned. "I must say, it is an honor to finally meet you. I have read all about you when I was growing up — such fascinating tales. You truly were a hero of the people, and for such a long time…"

His head shifted just slightly. "And Noel Kreiss. The time traveller. I can't say your tales of your adventures were as widely renowned as the Director's, but from what I could find… ahh. Having the two of you here is a dream come true."

"But you didn't come here for us." Hope observed.

"No," the speaker admitted, gloved fingers tapping against the arm of the chair he had claimed. "No one had any knowledge to where you had disappeared to the past few centuries. Either of you. Some started to believe that Noel Kreiss the time traveller was in fact an entirely fictional character, since there was no proof of his existence. I, however, held on to the belief you were real."

"Comforting," Noel intoned dryly. Hope spared a glance over and shook his head minutely, seeing just how tightly the hunter had clenched his fists.

"Seeing the two of you was a pleasant surprise." The Voice said, folding his hands together disarmingly, palms upward. "Might I ask where you were heading?"

The answer, Hope thought, should be obvious considering what train they were taking. But then again, the destination of the train was not their final destination. And the resting place where Fang, Vanille, and Mog were placed was top secret beyond the location of Academy personnel. Their existence, even location, had never been much of a secret. If Academy members had kept quiet about that, then there was no chance anyone outside of these who originally monitored the crystals to have revealed the resting locations of Fang and Vanille.

"You don't seem… eager to speak to me."

That was an understatement.

"You seem quite eager to speak with us." Hope said. "From my experience, men with guns pointed at innocents do not bring glad tidings."

"I did what I must. What is religion and belief in days like these? Unless I make a solid impression, who on this train would listen to what I have to say?"

"You choose the method of a religion forced upon others."

"Ahh." The man leaned forward, his submissive stance entirely wiped away as his form turned predatory. "This is where you would be wrong, Director. I am giving them a vision. Whether they believe it or not now, their minds will not stop recounting my words. They will question, they will doubt, but in the end… they will _believe_. For what is this slow passing of days if not a crucible to heat our lingering thoughts? I have told them nothing but the truth, and in time, they will come to realize that past the guns and the trauma."

"You've been reported to have murdered a great amount of innocents." Hope said, keeping his expression blank and ignoring that logic for now. He would get to that later. "Those you talk to don't realize what you want them to — they just die. I'd say that cuts your plans short."

"I believe you of all people would understand a greater plan, Director Estheim. Or… Hope. May I call you Hope?"

"No." He responded tersely. "You may not."

"Pity. I heard that was what you insisted all your colleagues call you by."

"Yet you are no colleague of mine. I don't believe I even know your name, while you know mine and my friend's."

"Yes…" The man drawled out. "Your friend. He is a quiet one."

"I've been learning to listen." Noel spoke up, crossing his arms. "So I can hear the bullsh—"

"Fraudulence." Hope interrupted quietly, leaning toward Noel to provide the word. He could feel Noel elbow him slightly at the interruption, obviously irritated that Hope was continually correcting his words (even if Hope had insisted he was adding to the hunter's vocabulary. In reality, it was more because he remembered the year Noel had insisted on learning all the cuss words and then had used it frequently and with relish, reminding Hope that the other really was still a teenager, even if he was far older than that by now).

"—fraudulence dropping from your words." The brunet continued as if Hope hadn't corrected him. The look he gave the scientist after was clearly unimpressed: you ruined my jibe!

Hope just shrugged in response.

"It is good to doubt." The man said, sounding almost smug. "Everyone must doubt before they believe."

"I'm afraid your message was too vague to be doubted." Hope quipped.

"Of rebirth, Director Estheim. My message was that of rebirth. This world needs to be reborn in order for chaos to be cleansed. But my words are not enough. The people do not listen to me as they once did to you. I possess not the skill in which to convey the necessity of what is to come."

Hope raised an eyebrow. He doubted that. The man had sparked a memory for him, of great leaders. His words were reminiscent of… The Guardian Corps leader, Cid Raines. Hope remembered the awe he had as a child when listening to that man speak — the controlled tone and the cadence of his words added to the belief in an impossible ideal… "From what I've heard, I'd say you're a skilled orator."

It was a skill he had never mastered. He fumbled over his thoughts, and often remembered too late what words to use, and what to say. What Hope did was only speak when he had to. Despite the praise he had received for his speeches, he almost never knew what to say. What could he do to make people listen to him?

He had told Noel once that the only thing he knew about speaking to others was to first ensure he knew how to listen. It was only by listening that he could understand their wavelength, their wording, and what they wanted to hear.

"Coming from you, that is a great compliment."

"But you speak in circles." Hope continued. "What I need to know is this: whether you are willing to let the people on this train go now that they've listened to your speech."

The Voice dipped his head, bringing up his hands palm up in a sign of respect. "I give you my word, there will be none harmed by my men so long as they are not attacked first."

Good. That was something Hope hadn't thought would be so easy to gain, even if he had no idea if he could trust this man's 'word'. "Like all the others you've 'let go'?"

"None were harmed by the followers of our creed. Surely you've paid more attention to what was said on the news? While they paint us in an unfavorable light, they have indeed stated truth on the caused of death, and I say now that it was not us nor our guns that exhumed them."

"No," Hope said slowly. "It was an explosion directly after your followers left."

Despite the mask, it wasn't hard to deduce the man's satisfaction.

"Indeed." He confirmed, and Noel tensed by Hope's side at the knowledge. An explosion meant something dangerous beside the guns… It meant a fuse or a bomb. "We would leave with a gift, although not what you are currently thinking. The explosion is not caused by us, but by one who refuses to doubt. Doubting, as I have stated, is an integral part of belief. You do not truly understand unless you question."

"So you would kill because there are people who don't conform to your expectations?" Noel's words were incredulous, and the hunter swiped an arm in front of himself as if swinging one of his swords, looking furious. "You want them to listen and believe you, you want them to doubt… Make up your mind already!"

"You'll soon come to understand." The Voice said, just as calm and collected as ever, with complete faith that of his words. "But as I can see that you're having trouble following along, I will speak plainly."

He stood up, and Hope registered in that moment just how tall the zealot was, towering over him and even several inches over Noel at his full height. He made for an intimidating figure in the mask and dark robes.

"Yes, there is a bomb on this train." He said plainly. "But the answer lies within my words, and those who listened will be spared the wrath of our God until the time comes when they fully comprehend His will."

"And then?" Hope questioned, voice low as he tried to remember all the words spoken during the Voice's speech. "What will happen to them then?"

"And then," the Voice said. "They will see the necessity in death before rebirth."

"So they either die now or die later?" Noel was furious. "That's the choice you're giving them?"

"All things die. All things end — that is the way of _life_. Without death, there is no true living. Without time, there is no real future."

"Nothing ends." Hope disagreed, tone sharp as he stepped forward, undaunted by the zealot's stature and shaking off Noel's silent warning not to. "Everything is a continuation beyond what anyone can see. The actions of one person influence the decisions of others in ways they can't comprehend. With us in a time where there is no birth, every life must be treasured. No one can be replaced, because there's no one to replace us. It's a saying that was true before chaos, but rings even bolder now."

Hope once again pushed away Noel's hand as the hunter tried to stop him from confronting the zealot.

"How can you justify death when we are all there is? This isn't like the days when each death was offset by new life; now, our numbers can only go down with nothing new to replace us. To promote that as a solution is an ideal that will end the world."

"The end of the world," The zealot responded. "Is exactly what I aim to propagate."

All of Hope's arguments at that moment felt stuck in his throat.

"You're insane." Noel bit out, stepping forward right into the zealot's space. Even without a weapon on him, the hunter had the stance of a fighter, and the confidence of someone with far too much experience in battle. "You want to end the world, and you wanted to talk with _us_? I've lost — _everything_, trying to make sure people survive. Did you expect me to listen to you plan to kill everyone and not expect me to stop you?"

Hope wasn't sure he either envied or thought the zealot stupid that the imposing man continued to keep his composure. Noel was right — they were the last people he should be talking to if he wanted to end the world.

"No," The man admitted. "I do not expect you to listen. But… I do expect that later, you will come to see things as I do, and even aid me on my cause."

At that, Hope stepped back and to the side in tandem with Noel's forward charge, the brunet armed with nothing but his own fists and skills to bring down the man who had so confidently admitted his plans. With how narrow the space in the train car was, Hope would only get in the way if he tried to help.

The robed man, however, was just as quick to respond and jump backward, shoes skidding back along the smooth floor of the train as he crouched into a defensive position.

"He's got pockets in the back!" Hope called out as Noel attacked again. "Two guns."

"Already on it!"

The zealot blocked with his forearms this time, stance ready to push Noel back except the hunter grabbed him by the forearms to use his forward momentum to flip over the man's head, curling up his legs to not hit the ceiling as he landed behind the enemy in a tight and controlled crouch, pulling out a hunting knife from within his pouch in one deft movement and swiping it across the back of the robes to spill the guns that had been hidden there since he had first shot at the roof before his speech.

The clattering of metal on the ground brought the Voice's attention behind him, and Hope saw Noel's eyes widen as the hunter brought the fist with his knife up to his face, blade pointed outward in surprise.

"As expected, it will take more than one meeting to clear the doubt in your faith." The Voice didn't sound very concerned about losing his guns, and brought his hands together two separate electronic devices which clicked the moment they touched and whirred to connect to each other, and Hope realized what it was the moment it connected and beeped to rely its completion.

"Gas! Get down!"

Just as the silver-haired man called out the warning, the container exploded to cover the room with mist, and Hope dropped down to the floor immediately and covered his nose and mouth with the crook of his left elbow, eyes stinging and burning, tearing up to obscure his vision as his exposed skin burned with bitter cold. He could only assume that Noel had acted just as fast, but the hunter had been standing much closer to than man than he had, and—

"Your reputation does not do you justice, Director. But I'm afraid the time of science and hope is long past."

There was the sound of metal striking through the air, and Hope flinched back despite his inability to see through the mist and his own stinging eyes.

"And the time of prayers and faith has begun. But I will leave a gift for former l'Cie who once saved humanity. Consider it a gesture of goodwill… and my paying court."

"—Like hell you will!"

Noel's voice was thick and raspy, and the following grunt and crash prompted Hope to stand on shaking legs, feeling as if control of his limbs was tenuous within the numbing mist. Another loud crash, and there was the strike of metal upon glass: once, twice, and finally the crack and suddenly the mist was gone and the air felt stolen from his lungs as the train car jerked violently, alarms immediately starting to shriek overhead as wind gushed into the car in an endless wave.

Hope stumbled and caught himself against a row of seats, gloves grasping to the edges as he looked up, wind blowing bangs into his eyes and obscuring his vision slightly as he took in the damage — one of the side windows had been broken, glass in large chunks and scattered in the wind. He saw just in time as Noel struck with his knife, pulling a long slash into the zealot's robes to reveal the gear he was wearing underneath.

Military grade armor much like he was used to see back in the days of PSICOM, weighing him down enough that he wasn't struggling as much to move as Noel was, fighting against the wind and speed of the train.

"Get back here." Noel growled, barely heard over the whistling of wind and the alarms. He had one arm defensively in front of his face partially to shield his eyes from the debris. "And let's settle this!"

"Later." The zealot promised. "As I will be seeing you again, Noel Kreiss."

With that said, the man twisted and pushed himself over the edge of the jagged glass, disappearing from sight even as Noel reached to grasp at the tail ends of his torn cloak, managing to grab a handful that ripped off easy thanks to torn seams.

"Damn it!" The hunter cursed, and Hope pushed himself away from the seats to grab at Noel's arm before the other could do anything rash.

"Don't!" The silver-haired man called out over the winds, shaking his head and holding on tightly. "We've still got a bomb to disarm!"

Not that he had ever disarmed a bomb before. The best chance they had was to find the thing and then throw it overboard where no one would be harmed. But his heart was hammering in his chest, a feeling he hadn't felt in a long time, and his grip on Noel's arm remained tight despite knowing now that the hunter wouldn't do something stupid.

It took the two of them several minutes to struggle their way out of that compartment, mostly hindered by the electronic lock that had activated with the damage to minimize damage and protect passengers in other train cars. Hope had cursed about it being a ridiculous device because it meant the lock would be condemning those within one compartment to death when they could still possibly get out and survive without harming anyone else.

After slamming a hand against the contraption to open the door, they realized that they hadn't been the only one subjected to the automated alarm and lock, as there were quite a few panicked and screaming passengers on the other side where they had originated from trying to hold on to whatever they could, due to several large windows being broken on that side.

The hijackers were gone, leaving only terrified civilians and an extremely dangerous train compartment. But why would…?

He thought fast. While the damage to the compartment wasn't life threatening to the passengers, panicked people were dangerous.

"Everyone please remain calm and follow me. Leave anything you can't carry with you behind for right now and we'll get you to a safer compartment."

Noel's inquiring gaze burned into him, but Hope ignored that as he turned to address the brunet, "Do you remember how the last lock was broken? I need you to do that again on the other side of the car we were in."

There was another moment of curious staring before Noel nodded, and then moved swiftly back into the previous train car, "Yeah. I got it."

Hope turned his attention to the passengers again, smiling at the woman sitting in front with her little girl, all too aware that he was standing too closely to where the Voice had made his speech. If he wanted them to listen to him, he had to do something different.

Unlike the last time, though, now it was the woman whose eyes widened in shock. "You…"

The recognition strained at Hope's smile, but… he could use that to his advantage.

"Yes. And I know a lot of people have heard about what happens to those who meet that cult. The news tends not to pull punches. To some, survival may seem an impossibility — yet I promise that if you stay calm and follow what I say, I promise that everyone will arrive at the end destination safe."

Without needing more prompting, the woman stood with her little girl in her arms, struggling just slightly against the violent winds, and stumbled her way to him. Hope caught her arm as she reached out to him, and guided her toward the doorway.

"Thank you, Mr. Estheim." She breathed out even as her daughter glanced between them in confusion. He nodded in response, no time to find the proper words as other groups of people started to stand up against the winds as well, bolstered in confidence by the one person who had trusted him.

"My friend will get you into a safer compartment." He promised, directing her to go through the slightly less broken train car he had just come through. An elderly man was next, and Hope murmured a gentle word as he passed by, helping him step over the notch on the ground that signified the connection between compartments. A couple of teenagers passed, muttering a slightly hysterical thanks as they clutched to his sleeves while passing, and then more people, all of them wide-eyed and huddled into themselves, hair whipping against their faces. Some stared at him in almost recognition while others didn't look up from the floor as they passed.

The car emptied out quickly and Hope finally dared to breathe a sigh of relief as he watched Noel usher them into the car in front of the two compartments.

Now all he had to do was find that bomb before it went off.

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* * *

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**A/N: **I'm late! I'm sorry. ^^;; I might start going back to one a week soon, since my writing seems to have tapered off at the moment, but this is the piece I've been trying to write (still not done with part two arrrrrg) that I dubbed the 'great train robbery' which isn't a robbery. Uh. Waaaay further into the future, but **Summer Memory**is entirely right in that all the pieces before (with the exception of the Great Fire) were just slow, _stuck_ things. This is the quiet and uneventful life, and neither Hope nor Noel are really suited for quiet and uneventful, no matter how much they might like it. Also, **Ankin**, I think your English is great! 8D Pieces like that _will_ come pretty frequently, although the next update is the end of Reunion, and the one after that may be a few snippets I wrote on tumblr that I'm putting together because they're some really short (hopefully humourous) pieces.

So thanks to _everyone_ who's still reading this, especially since all these things are majorly unbeta'd and seem to come irregularly now. ^^;; I'm currently attempting to write something based on the Test Subjects paradox ending, so we'll see how that goes as well!


	12. one hundred years (cont)

**Reunion, final**

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This time, Hope was the one in the wrong.

Noel showed up at the door bright and early.

"Morning!" His greeting was rushed and cheerful when Hope opened the door, leaning against the door frame like he had been _expected_ and they had planned some outing ages ago that he was just following up on.. "So I heard about this coffee shop across town—"

Hope shut the door (quite gently, in his opinion), and then purposefully ignored the protests as he went to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. He didn't need to go out for that.

Afterward, he answered his mail from Academy associates and reviewed a few ideas that had been sent to him.

He had to stop once in order to draw the curtains when he saw a face pressed up against the glass (looking extremely pitiful), and then he went to the kitchen to get another cup of coffee… mostly because he felt he deserved another one.

There was another knock on his door near noon, and this time he plastered on a smile as he answered to the door to greet his elderly neighbour.

"Hello, Mrs. Holdon." He hoped that she couldn't see just how out of sorts he was. "What can I do for you today?"

The elderly lady looked startled by his presence, as if she had been focused entirely on something else, with her head turned to the side and eyes wide as she gripped onto a thin sun hat between her hands.

"Oh!" She exclaimed, looking at him. "Oh. I just wanted you to know, dearie, that there is a man who has been sitting in front if your door the past three hours at least. Quite tall, young, brown hair… I just let him into my apartment to use the loo, but thought I would check in with you in case you were wondering why there was someone outside your door… or why he's missing, because you never know."

…But of course it wouldn't be that easy to get rid of him. Hope's smile faltered.

"So you do know him?" She looked more comforted by that small sign, even if the sign was disapproval. "He said he was waiting for you to stop being upset, and I told him I've never known you to be upset. Such a sweetheart… he's been very patient, even if he must have misunderstood things."

"I know him, yes." Hope confirmed. "But it's been a very long time since we've seen each other."

"Well, it must be nice to see old friends, then." She smiled at him. "It's far too easy, days like these, to lose track of people. Far too easy. Best to keep track of people who are important."

"I'll keep that in mind." It was hard to disagree with that logic, especially when he _didn't_ disagree. He just didn't want Noel anywhere around until things were explained or he calmed down.

Maybe in ten years.

(Alright, so that thought may have been slightly spiteful.)

She smiled brightly at him, and Hope found himself relenting despite his best intentions.

"—I'll speak with him."

"Oh, good. I'll go get him right now, then. Time's a-wasting!"

_Actually_, Hope wanted to protest. _It's_ _**not**__. _

But she was gone before he could think up something else to say, not being able to protest to her good intentions. Hope placed a hand over his eyes and sighed lightly. This wasn't how he wanted his morning to go… or his day, for that matter. He had just wanted to get things done and forget, for a little while, about the information that he had been told. He was going to pick up on the trail the next day, when the sun came up again, because then he might be better prepared to deal with it.

Crystal. Why did it make him want to cry? Fang and Vanille… and now Lightning? Had Snow been crystallized as well? He knew that it wasn't true death, because he had woken from crystal stasis before, but somehow it felt… worse than death. To wait and wait and hope… and then never seeing them again.

Had he stayed in 13AF back then and not traveled to the future, he would have died waiting for everyone to come back. But even now, six hundred years after Fang and Vanille had been crystallized, they were still cold.

There was a quiet part of himself that refused to believe in _never_, because he was still alive and might be for a very long time if chaos didn't relent, and that meant all sorts of possibilities had risen regarding how he could wait.

But that was just the thing. He was sick of being the one to wait and take the slow path while others charged ahead to save the world. Nothing he did felt important enough, and the praise of his colleagues felt empty when he thought about just how hard his friends were fighting in order to save to future. They had given everything.

And him… so had he. Except for him, there was always more to give. Selfish as it was, Hope didn't want to give any more. He couldn't _stop_, but he had already given so many whispered prayers, had already waited for so many people who never showed up again. He didn't want to add Noel to that list. Waiting had never been his specialty, but he had forced himself to learn.

It wasn't a lesson he liked repeating.

"Hey."

Hope drew in a sharp breath at the voice, hand still covering his eyes.

"I know—" The words were abruptly halted by a quiet and almost angry huff. Hope stayed still, not looking and not speaking, waiting for that explanation he already knew wouldn't come. Perhaps he really had been too angry the day before, because he knew Noel and if Noel said that he couldn't say, then he _wouldn't_. No matter how petty the temper tantrum Hope threw.

And what a prime example the scientist was setting with his behavior. Hope could almost wilt under the weight of the thought. He wasn't fourteen anymore, but why did he still feel the same way?

There was a shifting, a rustling of clothes as Noel fidgeted, obviously nervous by how still Hope was standing. "I know I shouldn't have left like that. Or I should have at least told you. I'm not used to having — people. People to leave behind.

"The reason — well, the reason that I can _tell_ you right now, was that I just needed a few days. It really was just a few days at first. I can't tell you after that, but I… get it. That time Caius left, I was so angry. I was furious that he'd just leave Yuel like that, but it was him leaving me as well. He just upped and left and never said a word about where he was going or for how long. I guess Yuel would know, but I didn't. And I was mad that he would abandon her, and I guess me as well. He left, and she died, and I was — I was _so angry_.

"…I guess after those first few days, that's what I realized. That I left just like that as well, and I didn't know if I went back… if something would have happened to you, or you'd say that Mog died, or terrible things had happened and I had _left_ when I could have done something to change it. That you'd be just as angry at me as I was at Caius. I couldn't — I couldn't stand that thought."

There was a sigh. "So I ran from it. I shouldn't have, but I did. And then something else happened that meant I couldn't go back yet. I'm sorry. It took me a really long time to realize that you'd react differently, and you wouldn't have been angry by my leaving; you'd be angry because I didn't _come back_."

There was an odd moment of silence, and Hope finally brought down his hand, although his gaze remained on the floor. It was odd to hear Noel admit that, to hear… maybe that was what he wanted to hear.

"…That's why I came back." Noel finished, voice uncertain. "Even if I took a long time, and I couldn't find any good news. I had to come back, because… because I need someone here too. Because you need to know that I _will_ come back; you won't be left behind forever. Not by me, and not by anyone. And because — because we're friends."

Friends. Hope wasn't sure whether he should be insulted by the entire statement about being left behind, or touched.

He looked up, taking in the fidgeting and shifting in Noel's normally cocksure demeanor, his clothes rumpled from sitting in one place for hours at a time, and the strands of brown hair matted and tangled from travel. How far had he gone? How long had it taken for him to get here?

"Noel…" He wasn't sure. Hope might have adapted too well to the slow pace that timelessness had left on the world. Maybe everyone had. A large part of him was grateful for the reasoning; understood that it must have been hard to admit that and that it may be as good an explanation as he was going to get. Another part, a smaller part, a part that still sounded fourteen and _hurt_ and couldn't understand why terrible things happened to people, didn't want to accept that as an justification.

Luckily, by now, that part was small and mostly silent. Quieted by many years of practice.

But still.

"Using Mrs. Holdon was unfair." It was just something he had to point out.

Noel broke into a smile at that. "You were never very good at saying no to people."

…He would have to amend that. Or attempt to.

"Ten days." He relented finally, feeling as if he wasn't being harsh enough. But then again… "That coffee shop you spoke of. You owe me coffee from there for ten days. In a row, bright and early. And no skipping out."

The hunter's smile was threatening to break into a grin. "Coffee. Yeah. I can do ten days. I could do ten _years_."

"Don't tempt me."

"Does that mean I can come in?"

Hope took a moment to take that question into consideration. "…Ask me that again in ten days."

The brunet's expression dropped slightly. "That's fair. If I get you coffee now, though, would this count as day one?"

He had to think about that. Hope had already had two cups and it was barely noon, but… Noel's expression waited for an answer, optimistic and expectant. He shouldn't give in, but…

"Yes."

There was that grin, and Noel leaned in just for a moment to inform him.

"I'll be right back!"

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**A/N:** omigosh, guys, I'm sorry. I went a very long time without checking and I kind of wish this site had queuing so I could just click things like 'post new chapter every Thursday' so this continues to come out even when I forget. ^^;; I've been doing a lot of free form poetry lately, but I'll be getting back to this as well! And I'm really glad people are sympathising with Hope a lot, especially since this is from his point of view. 8D I guess this part is just a reminder that since it's from Hope's point of view, he won't see anything from Noel's point of view unless they actually talk things through, and that there are a lot of things that Noel must be thinking as well through the five hundred years.


	13. nineteen years

**Request from anonymous:** _Can you write something in the White Noise universe in which Hope protects Noel from a monster or something and ends up horribly hurt?_

Answer: Sure thing!

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It was an accident.

It was, Hope realized belatedly, how most things happened in his life: through a complete accident. He could have cited the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, because the entire trip was supposed to be routine: they had gone down this route a hundred, a thousand, times. Enough that Hope could catalogue every tree and branch down the small path that he and Noel had created over the years of trodding down the same road every morning shortly after sunrise.

It should have been the same trip. Nothing new to encounter because they weren't venturing anywhere new. But then again, there was no such thing as zero tolerance. One could never be a hundred percent sure of anything because… accidents happened. So he could have cited the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and yet…

Honestly, Hope thought dimly as he attempted to keep his organs within his body as if a blood soaked hand pressing against the gaping wound over his stomach would do much, it was probably more to do with a variation of Murphy's Law, which wasn't very scientific at all.

It had been Noel who insisted years ago that if Hope was going to spend all day down in the basement fiddling with 'pieces of metal', then the scientist should at least know what day it was seeing as Hope had a habit of disappearing down there for multiple days at a time. The brunet had proposed that at the very least, they would take a walk together — _some_ form of exercise — an hour after sunrise so that Hope might remember what sunshine actually _looked_ like.

It was an argument Hope didn't know how to respond to, and so they had managed to map out several routes along the forest in the next few years, learning more about the resources of the area and what inhabited the place. Noel had grumbled about the lack of monsters around to hunt, life somehow scarcer with the slowing of time for creatures.

The area was mostly empty of anything that would attack them on sight, as the two of them had become just as much part of the forest as the rest of the monsters. They would occasionally run into some irritable Flans or Triffids, Rafflesia and Sahagin on rainier days. There was a protective Ochu in the north part of the forest, and Cait Sith and Fachan scattered about the forest that didn't even bother them anymore.

This was just another normal day in a long series of normal days. As such, both he and Noel had been entirely off their guard, and even _curious_, when they heard the soft clanking of metal from the bushes. Noel might have never encountered it before, but Hope should have known _damned well._

It got the pre-emptive strike, cutting the hunter down while Noel was speaking to Hope and reassuring the older man about the slight misgivings Hope had then. The strike had included a Fog spell, and (stupid,_ stupid_) neither of them had thought to bring potions with them. With Noel down with a deep and bleeding wound in his thigh and unable to cast magic, Hope had just… reacted.

Drawing fire, he had once been scolded for by Vanille long ago, was the worst thing he could do. Hope just didn't have enough experience, didn't have a high enough pain tolerance, to play at bait or Sentinel. At best, he was a distance attacker, a support, a healer.

Except in this case, he could feel the Grudge building already and had immediately released his boomerang with a snap of his wrist to send it hurling at the Tonberry and draw its attention. Hope had counted on the fact that it could only do close ranged attacks, and had begun an elaborate dance to both keep the Tonberry's attention on him but avoid all of its attacks.

What he had forgotten, stupidly enough, had been the building Grudge. The Grudge that allowed it to increase both its strength and magic, so that by the time the monster managed to catch up to him…

Hope hissed against the pain, the only thing that was keeping him conscious against his blurring vision even as his eyes tried to track the glint of the lantern carried around by the Tonberry. He had managed to dodge every attack past Imminent Grudge, but after that…

_Fog,_ Hope concluded as his thoughts kept running into a blank wall. _I've had Fog cast on me._

Him being caught had been a complete accident, a rock in the path that Hope had forgotten was there. He had moved to avoid the swipe of the knife, the threatening jab he knew was coming, and had stumbled over a rock of all things. It was enough that instead of a painful and potentially life threatening wound being delivered to his upper legs, his fall had ensured that the wound would be delivered somewhere much more life-threatening.

He could hear his boomerang clatter to the ground a good ways away.

It was, Hope thought as he fell onto his back, a lot of blood. A lot more blood than he thought he had in his person.

No potions and no magic. Hope wondered if this constituted as a bad day.

There was that clinking of metal again as the Tonberry moved toward him, ever so calm now with protruding yellow eyes like that of an insect, and the knife it carried pointed outward in an eternally offensive stance. Even if Hope could move about now, he had no weapons to pierce its tough skin. He remembered, distantly, battling Tonberries when he was a l'Cie, and how shocked he had been when Lightning's gunblade hadn't been able to pierce its skin. It had been a tough battle then, and that had been with three people fighting and all of them with an insulting amount of strength and magic.

Hope tore a hand slick with blood away from his wound to grasp at the rock that had tripped him, fingers slippery as he found the blasted object. It didn't matter if his thoughts were blurred and each move twisted the pain further; Hope would find a way to disable that Tonberry no matter what once that thing moved closer —

"Haaarg!"

That was the only warning Hope, and that Tonberry, got before what the scientist distantly recognized as the Odinblade slammed past, pushing the small Tonberry back and trapping the monster between two sharp ridges as the blades dug deep into a tree trunk behind it. The green creatures struggled, air beneath its feet and furiously striking at the sword with its blunt knife, but a knife was no match for the paradox weapon when it was more used to slicing through soft flesh.

It was nothing that would kill the Tonberry, or even damage it much, but for now the creature was trapped and rendered harmless.

Hope looked away from the creature in shock, fingers still curled around the rock, to see Noel at the handle, teeth bared as the hunter dug the blade even deeper into the tree. His leg was still bleeding sluggishly and noticeably through strips of ripped fabric tied tightly across the wound, and Hope wondered for a moment if the Tonberry's knife had managed to nick and damage the bone, and how that would be preferable to a sliced artery.

"You," Noel declared through clenched teeth at the Tonberry, sounding furious, "can just _stay there._ And once I find out you're not poisonous, you're going to be dinner for a _week_."

The hunter finally backed away when the Tonberry stopped struggling, realizing that there was nothing that could be done to free itself. It was only then that Noel finally allowed him a grimace and a small stumble, letting go of the weapons and a hand going up to his head as if that mere action could dispel the _Fog_ spell.

"Urg." Noel complained, weight on his uninjured leg. "Hope, I think I'm going to need help getting home—"

The words came to an abrupt stop as the hunter drew in a sharp breath, finally focusing his gaze on the other.

"Sorry," Hope murmured shakily with a small, almost hysterical, breath of a laugh. The breath was stilted as jolts of pain caused his stomach muscles to clench up, only to realize how much of a bad idea that was as the pain increased rather than relented. "I don't think — I'll be of much help."

Keeping his head up now that the Tonberry had been subdued was too much of an effort, and he let his head drop heavily against the dirt as he closed his eyes tightly against the pain. Pain that, he noticed dimly, was finally and slowly starting to give way to a certain feeling of numb.

_Shock,_ a more clinical part of his mind provided.

Human beings, Hope had learned early on, were such weak creatures. They died from such easy things. No shells to protect them or claws or fangs. No poison or even coloration that might dissuade a predator. They had soft, unprotected skin and were so easy to disable. In short, humans were really supposed to be nature's ultimate prey. Even mice had their claws and rabbits had their kick.

They had only survived because of their intelligence and their pure, stubborn will. They had learned to use the environment to their advantage and communicated with each other, learned from each dead person's mistakes. What did that person do wrong that caused them to die early?

He desperately hoped that it wouldn't be 'tripped over a rock' for him.

"_Hope_." He could hear Noel's uneven steps that rushed to his side and then dropped down heavily beside him. "_Shit_. Shit, shit, shit — hold on, okay? Hold on, I've got — _shit_."

Distantly, Hope wondered if 'don't worry, this isn't the first time I've been vivisected by some monster' would count as decent reassurance, but then thought better of it when he figured it would take too much energy just to say.

"Hope!" There was a brief shake of his shoulder that made him hiss. "No. Eyes on me. You're always ordering me around, so it's only fair I get to order you around right now, right?"

It was hard to miss just how pitchy the hunter's voice had gotten.

"Sure thing," Hope breathed out, despite not opening his eyes. It was less painful now; lighter. Easier to ignore Noel's words as he retreated and his breathing slowed.

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The next thing Hope knew, he was blinking slowly as his ceiling came into view, the dim phosphorescent lights that he had installed where the ceiling met the wall gentle on tired eyes. He blinked several times, and then pushed himself up, realizing that he was back at home and in his own bed.

The sound of his movement was echoed only a few feet away, and he turned his head to see Noel start awake from where the hunter had fallen asleep on one of the dining chairs he must have dragged into the room, small and uncomfortable looking when it came to sleeping on.

"You're awake!" Noel stated before Hope could voice a question. The hunter scrambled to sit up straighter, prompting a irritated yowl from the Cait Sith that had settled into his lap, now clinging to Noel's shirt. "Good. Feeling better?"

He was. There was still a dull ache, but Hope attributed that to a phantom pain.

"…What happened?" The question was hesitant, especially since Hope had been so sure that their encounter with the Tonberry would be… fatal, probably. At least leaving lasting damage.

At that, Noel deflated slightly but then ducked his head, a hand going to the back of his neck with embarrassment and huffing before picking up the Cait Sith on his lap by the collar, the kit squirming and mewing pitifully at Hope for help. It was, Hope noted, the biggest of the three kits; the great troublemaker and Noel's namesake.

"This one was following us." Noel's tone was… unreadable. "And apparently he's coming into his abilities."

Hope stared. "Meaning?"

The hunter poked at the Cait Sith, who hissed and swiped his claws half-heartedly.

"He healed us." Noel said, sounding somewhere between bewildered, grateful, and resigned. "All these years, and I forgot these guys can do magic."

That's right, Hope remembered, Cait Sith were known for healing abilities. They weren't altogether dangerous on their own, but could be quite the nuisance when teamed up with other monsters and negating the damage done to them.

Hope stretched out a hand at the kit, watching the Cait Sith sniff at his fingers a moment before nudging his head forward and flattening his ears against the palm of the scientist's hand.

"What," Hope finally asked after a long moment where he threaded his fingers through the Cait Sith's fur gratefully, "Happened to the Tonberry?"

Noel's expression hardened. "I took care of it."

By himself? Hope wanted to inquire, but thought better of that.

"Alright." Hope accepted, but then smiled. "Maybe we should start taking them with us."

At that, Noel barked out a laugh. "Should I get started on making leashes?"

Hope's smiled strained just the slightest bit. "Maybe not."

The kits were big enough to take care of themselves now, and the burgeoning abilities proved that. He had no doubt that should they want to, the three kits would have an easy time making it back to the house. But it may be time to teach them how to hunt and survive outside of human hands.

He and Noel had saved them so many years ago… now it felt like they had come full circle.

"Hope?"

The scientist blinked, and then looked up to meet Noel's blue eyes, intense with worry.

"Thank you." Hope said, because he felt like he should and he needed to, and because he really was grateful to still be alive, and not only that, but be okay after a close call like that. "For taking care of it."

The brunet looked stunned, and then opened his mouth to protest, but seemed to catch himself, his expression a mixture of guilt and worry and faded pain.

"…Yeah." He finally agreed, relaxing for the first time since they had run into the Tonberry. "No problem."

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**A/N: **Will have little snippets and drabbles next week as well~ Thanks to everyone who didn't give up on this little series of ficlets! No, really, I adore you guys and the reviews and fhdjkafsjk you people are _fantastic_. I'm so glad this little story is liked and you guys are really the very best. I'm sorry, I get all flustered by reviews! In a good way, yeap yeap.


	14. (various 1)

**Moments**

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"Now_ that_," Noel insisted, leaning forward until he was in danger of falling off the couch altogether, a handful of popcorn in one hand and the rest of the tub in his other arm, tipped forward dangerously along with the rest of him as he pulled up his legs to get more leverage, "is unbelievable! Why would _anyone_ decide to walk down to the cellar when they know that there's a monster on the loose who likes dark and dry places_ and eating people_? And by herself! Rule one in situations like this — "

_"Stay together."_ Hope echoed Noel's words, rolling his eyes as the younger man shouted his advice and insults towards the holo-vid. He reached over casually to snag the collar of the Cait Sith attempting to sneak into Noel's tub of popcorn, inciting an innocent mewing from the kit. It was easy enough to set the sulking Cait Sith on the arm of the couch, far away from the popcorn. "Yes, we've learned this. But she's not going to go back just because you tell her to, Noel."

"She shouldn't need me to _tell_ her that! Isn't she supposed to be an intern at the Academy?" Noel demanded, now turning to Hope.

"Her character is, yes." Hope agreed.

"I thought you guys only took the smart ones! You should have a trial, Hope. Make sure they can make their way out of a paper bag or something, because all those test scores of yours or whatever it is that's needed to get into the Academy won't mean much if they don't have any common sense!"

Hope could only lean back into the couch and sigh despondently as Noel continued to make a ruckus as the character on screen (inevitably) ran into the monster while in the cellar, the creature swathed in shadow so that viewers could see nothing more than a menacing flash of teeth and glowing, unearthly eyes.

"I'm fairly certain Academy interns aren't allowed to wear as little as she has on, either." He said, shaking his head. "A rifle, but no type of armor for protection? If she already knows this thing spits acid — "

"Maybe she doesn't want her clothes to melt into her skin if that happens." Noel said when he settled down again, watching with wide eyes as the actress on the screen reacted appropriately to the monster, screaming and then running — instead up up the stairs where she would be safe again in the sunlight — down the insanely expansive corridors beyond a hidden door in the cellar. "Girls wear strange things when they fight. Did you know that Serah was _actually_ going to wear some sort of swimsuit while fighting in Sunleth?"

"Is that where you guys found Snow?"

"Well, yeah."

"I don't think I want to know more than that." Hope grumbled, figuring he knew why Serah might have wanted that outfit there. He snatched a handful of popcorn from Noel's tub, grimacing both at the feeling of excessive butter on his fingers and then at the screen as the character hid and then attempted to create a bomb from the (little) amount of items on her person — enough to blow up the monster. "Oh — are you _kidding_?"

"What? _What?_" Noel demanded, his attention flickering between Hope and the holo-vid furiously.

"Why would there be a lab there?" Hope demanded from the screen. "And — she's going to use magnesium? She's going to blind herself! And if there's a lab, then it's much easier to use nitrogen, especially when there's a gas mask right behind her!"

"Oh no," Noel groaned. "Not the technobabble, Hope. We had an agreement — "

"She's picking up a_ bone saw_!" It was a _travesty_. How could anyone believe this character was actually an Academy intern? "What's she going to do with that? She can't cut the monster! It's got _skin_! Do you know the amount of vibrations that skin elasticity can absorb? Bone saws can only cut through solid matter via vibrations, which is why it works on _bones_ — "

He was cut off as Noel attempted to smother him with a cushion.

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"You," Noel declared not a week into the rebuilding process that involved computer systems and technology. "Are not human."

"Yes, you've said that." Hope responded absentmindedly, carefully inserting the ram in one of the newer constructs. It was an experimental thing, and he wasn't sure if all the parts were compatible with each other, but he'd give it a try first before he wandered to other options. He had requested the hunter's help with a few of the construction works, and while Noel had been enthusiastic at first, that excitement had dwindled fast as Hope started telling him about the parts of computer systems and how they worked.

Or maybe that enthusiasm had dwindled when Hope got to explaining the difference between old and quantum computers… he wasn't sure.

(_Hope_ thought that information was quite exciting. Universal quantum gates and conditional operators might have been a bit much for Noel, though….)

"Normal humans," Noel continued to rant despite continuing to hold the heavy case still for Hope to work within, sure that the scientist wasn't listening to him any more. "Need things like… food! Sleep. Sunlight. They can't stare at those — those —"

"I haven't even started on the programs yet." Hope interrupted, sounding amused even as he glanced up at the other for a mere second to take in just how agitated Noel really was. The answer was: not really. Most likely the hunter was just jittery and bored. "Computing in qubits is going to take much longer than merely assembling the physical components. I'd have to bypass the superposition—"

At that, the hunter slouched down behind the metal case and groaned, somehow managing not to jostle anything within the case.

"No more." Noel moan from behind the case. "I give up. You win. Please start talking like a normal person now."

Hope couldn't help the curl of his lips even as he turned his attention back toward the system. "…You might find this interesting if you spent some time learning it."

"it's interesting." Came Noel's muffled retort. "…Can we go now?"

"Go where?"

"_Out._" Noel insisted, just the word filling him with more energy. "Out of this basement. Into the forest. See the sun. Get some fresh air. Let's go _hunting_."

Hope thought for a bit, reaching deep into the case to tighten one of the screws. "Maybe if you can tell me why we need a separate coolant system to stabilize the core processor."

"Are you kidding." It wasn't so much a question as the driest statement Hope had ever heard. "How am I supposed to know?"

Hope let out an exasperated breath. "I've been telling you all about it!"

"And I don't know what you're talking about!"

They were getting nowhere fast at this rate. But without his research assistants at the Academy, Hope needed someone who could at least understand what he was talking about… at times.

"How about," He spoke up, finally withdrawing from within the case. "If you can answer that question, we'll go hunting for tonight's dinner."

He could do with a change from the processed nutrient bars he's been snacking on while working, anyway.

"Hmm…" Noel didn't sound convinced.

"Fine." Hope relented. They had been here for a few days, and it was a little unfair when Noel was probably used to, well, not being cooped up in a small room working with technology for weeks on end. Despite everything, they had the excess time and Hope wasn't too worried about completing the project any time soon. "We'll go for a week."

"Now you're talking!" Noel's head appeared from behind the casing with a grin. "The coolant system's needed not only because the computer generates tremendous heat, but because any vibrations strong enough to harm the spin of an electron could potentially destroy the entire processing system."

Hope nearly dropped his screwdriver.

"You know, I _do_ listen to you even if I have no idea what you're saying." The earnest words were belied with a grin as Noel worked on shimmying his way out from behind the computer casing. "Alright! Let's go hunting!"

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"Are you _sure_ that's where you're supposed to be put it?"

"Yes. Maybe." Hope paused, embarrassed as fingers skimmed past the glowing words on his tablet. "The instructions were… vague."

Noel gave him a dubious look from underneath. "Isn't this supposed to be a lot easier than what you do normally at that Academy of yours? Something everyone can do."

Everyone, apparently, didn't translate into the confusion and distinct headaches the instruction charts were giving him, and Hope found his face growing warm at the reminder that he didn't exactly represent the norm with the way he had grown up.

The hunter's look turned mischievous as he caught the flush. "You've never done this before!"

"There was neither the time nor opportunity—"

"How about," Noel proposed, grinning. "You put that thing down and just come down here and help me? It might be easier if you're not reading about how to do it, and just do it."

The former Academy director froze a moment before his eyes darted down once again to the tablet and he gave a near indiscernible sigh. "You're suggesting it would be intuitive."

"Hope," Noel's tone was flat. "It's a kitchen sink. It can't be that hard to change."

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**A/N:** Snippets of life. XD Different moments for each little thing, easily forgotten in the midst of important matters. If I'm gone for a little while after this, please blame _Remember Me_ and _The Last of U__s_. Yeeeap.


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